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Stage Lovers' Series 



Famous Actresses of the Day in 
America* First Series 

Famous Actresses of the Day in 
America. Second Series 

Prima Donnas and Soubrettes of Light 
Opera and Musical Comedy in 
America 

Famous Actors of the Day in America. 

First Series 

Famous Actors of the Day in America. 

Second Series 

Celebrated Comedians of Light Opera 

and Musical Comedy in America 
David Garricfc and His Contemporaries 
The Kembles and Their Contemporaries 
Kean and Booth and Their Contempo- 
raries 
Macready and Forrest and Their Con- 
temporaries 
Edwin Booth and His Contemporaries 



L. C. PAGE & COMPANY 

200 Summer Street, Boston, Mass. 

Publishers 



FAMOUS ACTRESSES OF THE DAY 



IN AMERICA 

SECOND SERIES 




JULIA MARL-OW: 



Famous Actresses 
of the Day 

in America 

SECOND SERIES 

By, / 
Lewis C. Strang 

ILLUSTRATED 



Boston 

L. C. Page and Company 

1902 



i9' 



THE LltRARV OF 
CONGRESS, 

TWO COfHM RECEDED 

AUG. 23 1901 

COPVR»«MT EHTSV 

CLASS £&XX« No. 

copy a 



Copyright, iqoi 

By L. C. Page & Company 
(incorporated) 

All rights rese?-ved 



Colonial T$xt%z 

Boston, Mass., U. S. A. 

Electrotyped and Printed by C. H. Simonds & Co. 





CONTENTS 




CHAPTER 




PAGE 


I. 


Julia Marlowe in Melodrama . 


11 


II. 


Henrietta Crosman 


26 


III. 


Mary Shaw and "Ben Hur" . 


46 


IV. 


Maude Adams in " L'Aiglon " . 


54 


V. 


Amelia Bingham . 


73 


VI. 


Ida Conquest 


90 


VII. 


Phozbe Davies 


102 


VIII. 


Mrs. Fiske as Becky Sharp 


120 


IX. 


Hilda Spong .... 


. 132 


X. 


Annie Russell in Light Comedo 


149 


XI. 


Valerie Bergere . 


. 176 


XII. 


Mary Mannering as a Star 


. 185 


XIII. 


" Zaza " and Mrs. Leslie Carteb 


k 201 


XIV. 


Anna Held .... 


. 214 


XV. 


Sarah Cowell LeMoyne 


. 226 


XVI. 


Mary Sanders 


244 


XVII. 


Ada Rehan'b Nell Gwyn . 


257 



Contents. 



CHAPTER 




PAGE 


XVIII. 


Elizabeth Tyree . 


. 270 


XIX. 


Grace George 


. 286 


XX. 


Margaret Anglin 


• 295 


XXI. 


Viola Allen . 


. 312 


XXII. 


Maxine Elliott . 


. 323 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 



PAGE 

Julia Marlowe as Mary Tudor in "When 

Knighthood Was in Flower " . Frontispiece 

Julia Marlowe as Barbara Frietchie in 

"Barbara Frietchie" 12 " 

Henrietta Crosman as Nell Gwyn in " Mis- 
tress Nell" 27 . 

Henrietta Crosman as Nell Gwyn, Mas- 
querading as Beau Adair, in "Mistress 
Nell" 40 

Mary Shaw as Amrah in " Ben Hur " . .51 

Maude Adams as the Duke of Reichstadt 

in "L'Aiglon" 54 

Maude Adams as the Duke of Reichstadt, 
with Edwin Arden as Metternich, in 
"L'Aiglon" 69 "" 

Amelia Bingham as Blanche in "The 

Climbers " 76 " 

Ida Conquest as Dorothy Manners in 

"Richard Carvel" 98 " 

Phcsbe Davies 102 

Mrs. Fiske as Becky Sharp in "Becky 

Sharp" . 121 



List of Illustrations. 

PAGE 

Hilda Spong 132 

Annie Russell as Miss Hobbs in " Miss Hobbs " 1 50 . 
Valerie Bergere as Cho-Cho San in "Ma- 
dame Butterfly" 179 

Mary Mannering as Janice Meredith in 

"Janice Meredith" 188 

Mrs. Leslie Carter . ... . . . 201 

Anna Held as Anna in "Papa's Wife" . . 218 • 
Sarah Cowell Le Moyne and Her Associates 

in "In a Balcony" 238 

Mary Sanders 244 

Ada Rehan as Nell Gwyn in "Sweet Nell 

of Old Drury" 267 

Elizabeth Tyree 270 

Grace George as Honoria in " Her Majesty " 288 

Margaret Anglin 295 

Viola Allen as Dolores in " In the Palace 

of the King" 316 

Maxine Elliott as Portia in ''The Mer- 
chant of Venice". . ... 328 






PREFACE. 

The Second Series of Famous Actresses 
of the Day in America is largely devoted 
to a critical review of the theatre in the 
United States from the fall of 1899 to 
the spring of 1901. Whereas, in the First 
Series, biography and anecdote were most 
prominent, in this Second Series criticism 
has been made the leading feature. In this 
volume only such actresses have been con- 
sidered whose work during the past two 
seasons has been especially noteworthy. 
This arbitrary classification will be found 
to include some whose careers have already 
been reviewed in the First Series, and 
others who have come into marked prom- 
inence since the fall of 1899. In addition, 
therefore, to a critical consideration of the 



Preface. 

work of the newcomers, their lives have 
also been recorded. The writer has tried al- 
ways to be accurate as regards dates, and 
complete as regards data, though he knows 
from previous experience that it is human to 
err, especially in dealing with biographical 
matter that has been gathered from such a 
variety of sources. 

Lewis C. Strang. 



FAMOUS ACTRESSES OF THE DAY 

IN AMERICA. 



CHAPTER I. 

JULIA MARLOWE IN MELODRAMA. 

With the production of " Barbara Frie- 
tchie" in the fall of 1899, and of "When 
Knighthood Was in Flower " one year later, 
the final step, in transforming Julia Marlowe 
from an earnest artist exclusively identified 
with classic tragedy and comedy and the 
more serious forms of modern drama, to a 
popular star in up-to-date romantic melo- 
drama, was taken. I suppose that the ex- 
perience was inevitable, but one may, even 
at that, venture to regret the waste of time 



12 Famous Actresses. 

and of effort involved in the descent of the 
most satisfactory Juliet, the sweetest Rosa- 
lind and the nearest perfect Viola of the 
English-speaking stage of to-day to the level 
of the heroine of a dramatised novel. What 
if Miss Marlowe did play this heroine better 
than anyone else could, better, indeed, than 
the part deserved being played ? She must, 
with her talent and training, at least have 
done that much. But why should she have 
played the heroine at all, when her art and 
personality could have been so much more 
worthily employed in illuminating some mas- 
terpiece of dramatic conception to the infinite 
credit of herself and with the unreserved 
approbation of her public ? 

Julia Marlowe originally produced Clyde 
Fitch's "Barbara Frietchie" in Philadelphia 
on October 10, 1899. In the first version 
of the play, Mr. Fitch followed the John 
Greenleaf Whittier legend to the extent of 
having a gray-haired Barbara wave a Union 



._ 



rasonwui 




JULIA MARLOWE 
As Barbara Frietchie in " Barbara Frietchie. 



Julia Marlowe in Melodrama. 13 

flag out of a window. In order to bring 
this condition about, he ordered that a night's 
vigil at the bedside of her dying lover should 
turn to venerable white the brunette tresses 
of the youthful Barbara. At the first per- 
formance in Philadephia, therefore, it was 
" yon gray head " which was seen at the 
window at the conclusion of the play. Miss 
Marlowe, however, declared that the hair- 
bleaching process was absurd, and it was 
never repeated. So the only resemblance 
between the Whittier Barbara and the Fitch 
Barbara that remained was the somewhat 
superficial one found in the circumstance 
that both defiantly flaunted the Stars and 
Stripes in the faces of Confederate soldiers 
marching through Frederickstown. 

Mr. Fitch placed a double burden on 
Miss Marlowe's shoulders when he passed 
this play over to her for public presentation. 
Not only did she have the responsibility 
of acting the leading part, which furnished 



14 Famous Actresses. 

the only element in the play that made it 
a possibility as an acting drama, but she 
also had practically to create this character 
from her own imagination. She was obliged 
to mould Mr. Fitch's vague outline into 
something resembling a human being, to 
imbue with life a mere figurehead, to turn 
a pleasure-loving girl into a serious-motived 
woman, without a hint from Mr. Fitch how 
to do it. Strange as it may seem, Mr. 
Fitch, after the opening scenes of the play, 
never paid the slightest attention to the 
development of the character for which his 
drama was named. He gave us to under- 
stand that this Southern girl was capricious 
and beautiful, a great flirt and a great favour- 
ite. He showed her in love with a Union 
officer, and then he dropped her and began 
inventing situations. 

Everything else that was found in the 
character was put there by Julia Marlowe, — 
the pervading sentiment, true and idealistic 



Julia Marlowe in Melodrama. 15 

at one and the same time, so true and so 
idealistic that not even Mr. Fitch's aggravat- 
ing melodrama could make it false and mawk- 
ish. To Julia Marlowe were due also the 
touching pathos, and the marvellous sincerity, 
which were proof against Mr. Fitch's wanton 
theatricalism. All these were the best of 
histrionic art, and, in addition, were wholly 
distinct from the wonderful charm and the 
rich womanliness that the Marlowe tempera- 
ment lent to Barbara Frietchie. 

The play itself was so good for an act 
and a half that one felt a personal grievance 
against Mr. Fitch, the hard-working young 
dramatist, for making the last two acts and 
a half so very bad. Of course there was 
unnecessary trouble from the first, caused 
by naming the play " Barbara Frietchie." Mr. 
Fitch, however, was cautious enough to print 
the following note on the playbill as a sort of 
buffer between himself and public opinion : 
"The author disclaims any intention to the 



1 6 Famous Actresses. 

writing of a historical play. He has en- 
deavoured merely to picture, in an imaginary 
story, some of the spirit and atmosphere of 
a certain period of our history, using the 
personality of Barbara Frietchie as best lend- 
ing itself to his purpose." 

The truth of the matter was that Mr. 
Fitch got it into his head that the picture 
of a woman waving a hostile flag in the 
face of the enemy would appeal to the 
average theatre audience, and accordingly 
he wrote a play, which he intended should 
lead up to that incident. The leading up 
process proved difficult of execution, and 
Mr. Fitch finally had to drag in his flag 
scene after the action had logically ceased. 

However, disregarding Barbara Frietchie 
and her preposterous death, let us see what 
else Mr. Fitch had to offer. His first act 
was rarely charming comedy. The door-step 
scene was in every way delightful, barring 
the unfortunate incident that represented the 



Julia Marlowe in Melodrama. iy 

Union Captain Trumbell as neglecting his 
duty and practically lying in order to prevent 
Barbara's Confederate brother from being 
made a prisoner. False touches similar to 
that are constantly found in war plays, but 
some day a bold pioneer will write an original 
war drama and leave out all such obvious un- 
truths. In Mr. Fitch's second act the true 
overshadowed the false. The parting of 
Trumbell and Barbara was a moment of 
the deepest pathos. The suspense in the 
episode of the sharpshooters was well con- 
ceived and, on the whole, effective. Barbara's 
act of shooting one of the renegades savoured 
too much of melodrama, however, but it 
was not a circumstance in the melodramatic 
line to what the third act furnished. This was 
a deliberate and cold-blooded effort to harass 
the spectator's feelings in a manner as inex- 
cusable as that resorted to by Sardou in 
the torture scene of " La Tosca." Moreover, 
it was potent enough theatrically to succeed 



1 8 Famous Actresses. 

in causing a great deal of causeless worry. 
Captain Trumbell was brought to Barbara's 
house fatally wounded. First we were in- 
troduced to a hard-hearted father, who would 
turn the dying man into the street. Bar- 
bara's tearful pleadings settled him. Next 
there was a discarded lover gone mad and 
seeking revenge. Finally there was the 
stern soldier, who would carry the unfortu- 
nate captain off to prison. The first scene 
of the last act depicted Barbara's grief after 
Trumbell's death. It, too, was trying, and 
it arrived at no satisfactory dramatic con- 
clusion. As in "Nathan Hale," Mr. Fitch 
wrote his play to an inevitable, but illogical, 
situation. Starting out as a comedy, the 
action terminated as a tragedy with the 
dramatically inexcusable death of Barbara. 
In " Barbara Frietchie," Mr. Fitch plunged 
headlong over the precipice of possible sec- 
tional controversy, which William Gillette 
skilfully avoided in "Secret Service," and 



Julia Marlowe in Melodrama. 1 9 

which James A. Heme never even ap- 
proached in "Griffith Davenport." "Bar- 
bara Frietchie" was strictly a Northern 
play, and Mr. Fitch's bias was apparent from 
the first, when, by means of the character 
of Colonel Negley, whose intolerance of the 
Union soldier was used for comic effect, he 
placed the audience completely out of sym- 
pathy with the South and with everything 
Southern. Mr. Fitch's attitude was still 
more pronounced in the character of Mr. 
Frietchie, whose threats against the wounded 
Captain Trumbell were so inhuman as to be 
almost grotesque. No Southern gentleman, 
no matter how bitter his feeling against the 
cause for which the Federal soldier fought, 
would have carried his hostility so far as 
all but to expel a helpless and dying officer 
from his house. At least, he should not 
do it on the stage, where generalisation is 
to an extent necessary. 

Mr. Fitch's blunder in this particular 



20 Famous Actresses. 

robbed his play of much dramatic strength, 
and it also destroyed a possible source of 
honest sentimental interest. By forcing Mr. 
Frietchie and all the other Southerners, ex- 
cept possibly Barbara's brother, out of the 
audience's sympathy, Mr. Fitch reduced the 
conflict, which furnished the theme of his 
drama, merely to a material issue. Barbara's 
mental struggle, which resulted in her tram- 
pling under foot every consideration of en- 
vironment, a struggle the psychological and 
dramatic possibilities of which were tremen- 
dous, was completely ignored. All that was 
presented was her superficial conflict with 
external obstacles. In other words, instead 
of a study of human character, we were 
given a conventional melodrama. What im- 
mense possibilities there were in this great 
love, which wrenched Barbara from family 
and from 'friends, which compelled her, be- 
cause she was a woman and must concede all, 
to cast aside her most deeply seated convic- 



Julia Marlowe in Melodrama. 21 

tions and prejudices, that she might meet her 
lover on his own ground, that she might feel 
that she was his, through and through ! Yet 
all this material for a vital drama was passed 
unheeded. Looking through Mr. Fitch's 
spectacles, we could not perceive why Bar- 
bara should lose a single night's sleep in 
trying to reconcile herself to her lover's 
point of view, nor did we see why she 
should grieve unduly at disobeying so small- 
minded and bigoted a father. 

Indeed, Mr. Fitch's play was chiefly useful 
for the opportunities it afforded Miss Mar- 
lowe to exhibit her art as an actress. And 
art of the highest quality it was, too, exqui- 
site in its sentiment, convincing in its sincer- 
ity, appealing in its pathos. Miss Marlowe 
was always true. I always dread to hear 
on the stage the feminine shriek, which the 
emotional actress habitually utters when 
she discovers a dead body ; and I was ap- 
prehensive, therefore, of the moment when 



22 Famous Actresses. 

Barbara should learn of the death of her 
lover. My fears were groundless, however. 
Miss Marlowe's cry was heartrending, not 
nerve-racking. It was the pitiful expression 
of a grief-stricken woman, and in a situation 
not so essentially artificial as the one devised 
by Mr. Fitch that tragedy-laden moment 
would have been almost unbearable. 

I have already referred to " Nathan Hale," 
and, indeed, the parallel between the two 
plays was striking. In both there was 
the light comedy introduction, then com- 
edy verging into melodrama, and finally a 
tragic ending, which, although historically 
inevitable, was logically — that is to say, as 
the necessary outcome of the preceding 
action — impossible. In " Barbara Frie- 
tchie," even more than in "Nathan Hale," 
the death scene was not the outcome of 
the drama proper, and it was also less effect- 
ive from a purely theatrical standpoint than 
one would naturally have expected. The 






Julia Marlowe in Melodrama. 23 

audience unquestionably felt that the shot 
fired by crazy Jack Negley and resulting in 
Barbara's death was wantonness, and it un- 
consciously resented the trickery. 

In the face of all its apparent and irritat- 
ing faults, how happened it, then, that " Bar- 
bara Frietchie," even in its most melodra- 
matic moments, preyed so mightily on the 
susceptibilities of the spectators ? There 
were a number of well-defined causes for 
this seeming paradox. First, I should place 
Miss Marlowe's beautiful impersonation of 
the leading character ; next, the thoroughly 
capable acting of her company; third, the 
love interest in the play, which appealed 
strongly to the imagination and to the 
sympathy; and, finally, Mr. Fitch's skill in 
the effective development of his situations. 
Plainly no artistic conscience kept him from 
making them by hook or crook count for all 
there was in them. 

Paul Kester's dramatisation of Charles 



24 Famous Actresses. 

Major's romantic novel, "When Knight- 
hood Was in Flower," which Julia Marlowe 
presented during the season of 1900-01, 
was better stagecraft than the average run 
of plays taken from novels. This statement, 
however, should not be interpreted as exalt- 
ing Mr. Kester's work high among the na- 
tions. " When Knighthood Was in Flower " 
was fair melodrama, and that was all the 
virtue it had. Its unreality never could be 
escaped, and its characters were outside of 
human experience. Its historical flavour 
was flat and tasteless, and there was no 
effort to attain even plausibility in the treat- 
ment either of personages, or of characters. 
However, the theatrical quality of Mary 
Tudor was such that Miss Marlowe could 
utilise the part advantageously for the dis- 
play of her personal beauty, charm, and 
variety as an actress. She made the charac- 
ter, and incidentally she made the play, too. 
It certainly would have been nothing with- 



Julia Marlowe in Melodrama. 25 

out her. As the coquette, she was brilliant, 
dazzling, imperious ; passionately fond as the 
maiden in love; an entrancing picture mas- 
querading in male attire ; fairly thrilling in 
moments of tempestuous anger. From first 
to last Miss Marlowe dominated, and this 
domination accounted for the popular suc- 
cess of the drama. 



CHAPTER II. 

HENRIETTA CROSMAN. 

Henrietta Crosman was decidedly the 
sensational feature of the theatrical season of 
1900-01. In her spectacular storming of 
the bulwarks of New York cocksureness and 
prejudice, one found the dramatic element 
present in satisfying completeness. Fame 
came to her literally in a night. She was 
comparatively unknown at the time she stole 
into New York, for stock company work, 
however worthy it may be in other respects, 
is not a breeder of widespread reputation. 
The Bijou Theatre, where she made her 
modest bow to the New York public on the 
dreary, stormy evening of Tuesday, October 
9, 1900, had just scored a failure, and for 
two weeks before Miss Crosman' s entrance 
26 



. 




HENRIETTA CROSMAN 
As Nell Gwyn in " Mistress Nell.' 



Henrietta Crosman. 27 

had been in darkness. Never did a star 
seek favour with such poverty of announce- 
ment. She opened, naturally enough, to a 
small audience, with not enough money in 
the house to pay for the electric lights. But 
she won out, won out squarely, too, on 
her merits as an actress. Though booked 
for only three weeks, she remained in New 
York for over five months, the last part 
of the run being in the Savoy Theatre, erst- 
while a music hall. And she left New York, 
it may be added, just as spectacularly as she 
came in, driven out, so she claimed, by the 
so-called Theatrical Syndicate. 

The play which served Miss Crosman in 
such good stead, and helped her to win rec- 
ognition as a worthy actress, was a four 
act comedy, called " Mistress Nell," in which 
Nell Gwyn figured as the leading personage. 
It was the work of George C. Hazelton, Jr., 
who, previous to the presentation of this 
work, had been unknown as a dramatic 



"28 Famous Actresses. 

author. Writing about " Mistress Nell " as 
a play, is exasperating business. One would 
like to praise it heartily, if not enthusias- 
tically, but he cannot do it and still keep 
on good terms with his conscience. While 
" Mistress Nell " was not in the first class of 
plays, it was, nevertheless, a good enough 
play to find fault with. That is a sincere 
compliment, though I have yet to run across 
a professional producer of plays who regards 
faultfinding in that light. The union of 
Miss Crosman's delightful Nell Gwyn with 
snatches of dialogue here and there thaf 
really sparkled with wit of the old comedy 
school did far more toward bringing the 
drama to a successful issue than either Mr. 
Hazelton's skill as a playwright or his ability 
as a delineator of character. The play was 
rather poorly constructed. It lacked neat- 
ness and incisiveness, and there was gener- 
ally no point to the action when Nell was 
not on the stage. 



Henrietta Crosman. 29 

"Mistress Nell" was light comedy, — 
nothing more, — a fact that it was well 
always to bear in mind, lest one were misled 
by its mocking assumption of history, and 
its serio-comic atmosphere of romanticism. 
" Mistress Nell " was not unlike a light opera 
without music, all for a bit of fun; and 
if one found the fun there, the play fully 
served its purpose. What would be the use, 
then, of searching the musty, dusty tomes of 
antiquity to learn if Mr. Hazelton fully 
observed the proprieties ? What was the 
difference whether he did or whether he did 
not ? It was all for the sport there might be 
in it, all for a joke and a laugh, simply to 
amuse and to keep one awake until it was 
time for him to go to bed. In a light 
comedy, however, a serious intrigue is always 
a bore, and Mr. Hazelton had quite a serious 
intrigue on hand in this play. Fortunately, 
the intrigue was developed so blindly that 
the spectators could not fully fathom it, 



30 Famous Actresses. 

and consequently it did as little harm as 
was possible. 

In spite of the intrigue, therefore, and even 
in the midst of it, there were many happy 
moments. The theatre scene of the first act 
developed a number of laughs, but it was too 
noisy for me. The Romeo and Juliet inter- 
view between the king and Nell, in the first 
half of the second act, was crowded with 
deliciously witty dialogue. The inn scene of 
the second half of this act was at times sug- 
gestively Shakespearian in atmosphere, and 
entertaining throughout, broadly humourous 
with its low comedy innkeeper and con- 
stable, and snappy and sparkling in the play 
between Nell, the Duchess of Portsmouth, 
and the king. Equally excellent was the 
third act, with Nell masquerading as a gal- 
lant cavalier at the duchess's ball. Perhaps 
the less said about the last act the better. 
There was some good material in it, but it 
was too lengthy, and, in the main, a some- 



Henrietta Crosman. 31 

what wearisome conclusion of the whole 
matter. 

Although "Mistress Nell" had its short- 
comings, it was at least a play. It stood by 
itself. It told a story that one could follow 
and comprehend without the aid of a chart or 
a diagram. It kept reasonably within the 
limits of its chosen light comedy field. Its 
characters, neither original nor especially 
amusing, with one or two exceptions, were, 
nevertheless, fashioned after excellent models. 
The dialogue was at its best very good in- 
deed, — genuinely "literary," in fact, — and 
at its worst it was never merely perfunctory. 
The action, not always strictly to the point, 
did not absolutely drag, except when the 
unfortunate intrigue that the Duchess of 
Portsmouth was engineering loomed up in 
the foreground. Whatever vitally concerned 
Nell Gwyn was usually interesting. Such 
situations were clear, snappy, and enter- 
taining. 



32 Famous Actresses. 

It will be understood, then, that Mr. 
Hazelton mastered the essentials of dra- 
matic workmanship decently enough, and 
that practically all his difficulties came from 
lack of care, or of understanding, or of experi- 
ence in working out details. There is a 
great deal of pure mechanism about a play. 
Such minor matters as exits and entrances 
have to be arranged just so, or else they 
affect the spectator unpleasantly. It is 
rarely possible for a casual looker-on to indi- 
cate exactly the shortcomings in a play- 
wright's work, for the spectator is not given 
time to study the drama in detail. He can 
pass judgment only on his impressions, with- 
out being able ordinarily to tell precisely 
what causes the impressions. One thing is 
certain, however, if the impression made 
by a play is artistically incomplete, the 
dramatist is always to blame, provided, of 
course, his play is acted as he wrote it. 
Ingenious stage management and intelligent 



Henrietta Crosman. 33 

acting may largely conceal a fault, just 
as poor stage management and bad acting 
will reveal it glaringly ; but, as a gener- 
alisation, good acting cannot save a bad 
play, nor bad acting wholly ruin a good 
play. 

In "Mistress Nell" Mr. Hazelton never 
was sure of himself except when Nell Gwyn 
was on the stage, and, with the excep- 
tion of the tavern scene, which was saved 
by its low comedy, every scene in which 
Nell did not appear was unconvincing. The 
first judgment was, of course, to pass over 
to Miss Crosman all the credit for this 
peculiar condition of affairs, and, without 
doubt, great credit was due her for bolster- 
ing Nell into captivating prominence. Yet 
even Miss Crosman had her limitations. 
Partially, at least, she attained her results 
because she had at hand workable material. 
The more correct statement of the case was 
this : Mr. Hazelton was himself interested 



34 Famous Actresses. 

in Nell Gwyn as he was interested in no 
other personage in the play. He felt the 
action of the drama as a reality only when 
Nell was mistress of the situation. He 
thought of all scenes from which she was 
absent only as connecting links. To his 
mind Nell Gwyn was the play, and every- 
thing else was padding. 

There certainly was something about this 
Nell Gwyn which made one wonder if the 
real Nell were that sort of a person. Was 
she so irresponsibly girlish ? I do not mean 
giddy, gushing, gasping girlishness, the girl- 
ishness of sweet sixteen or blushing sixty, 
but unaffected, happy-spirited, full-blooded 
girlishness, the girlishness of fearless inno- 
cence, the bravado of untainted purity. It 
did seem a bit odd to associate a Nell Gwyn 
with innocence and purity. We grant her 
wit, humour, charm, everything fascinating, 
except the most fascinating thing of all, — 
the spontaneous, unprudish, whole - souled 



Henrietta Crosman. 35 

good fellowship of a heart that is both 
innocent and pure. There is nothing like 
it under heaven. 

Nell Gwyn won the love of a king — that 
is history. Not by wit alone, I warrant, nor 
by beauty, vivacity, or audacity ; but by the 
union of all these charms, and mayhap with 
them such strange innocence and purity of 
mind, that even a king was tempted. Of 
course you say impossible, and point to 
Nell's life in triumphant vindication of the 
impossibility. That proves nothing. Dragged 
from the scum of London streets, she may 
have been, bred in the gutter and nurtured 
amidst rottenness. I have seen a beautiful 
flower blossoming and fragrant on a dung- 
hill. Circumstances point to probabilities, 
but they do not fix conclusions. But, you 
exclaim, she bandied rude jests with the 
pittites in the theatre, and she swore like 
a London cabman. Again, these things 
prove nothing. Innocent and pure she 



36 Famous Actresses. 

may have been, though her jokes outlawed 
those of Rabelais himself, and her oaths 
were as sulphurous as the hell that was so 
often on her lips. Fie, fie, you don't believe 
it? Then you lack experience, and that's 
an end on't. 

Such, at any rate, was the Nell Gwyn that 
Mr. Hazelton imagined and that Miss Cros- 
man presented on the stage. And whether 
you found her the ideal about whom Pepys 
wrote so enthusiastically, or whether you 
winked your eye knowingly at your neigh- 
bour with a sly remark, "All right for the 
ladies, you know, but not Nell Gwyn, not in a 
million years," — whether she convinced your 
historical notion or not, she was bound to 
tickle your present appreciative sense. Sniff 
at her as a wholly frivolous conception you 
might, but that did not keep you from be- 
coming very fond of her, when you saw that 
she was wonderfully pretty to look upon, full 
of jollity and of humour, droll, and of nimble 



Henrietta Crosman. 37 

wit. You only wished that she did not 
laugh so much. 

Henrietta Crosman came to me as a 
wholly new sensation. Not only was she 
a new star; she was a new actress as well. 
My first impression regarding her was sur- 
prise at the attractiveness — better yet, the 
winsomeness — of her face. I had seen her 
pictures, and, judging from them, I did not 
expect to find her a woman of such magical 
prettiness. There was a glow of personality 
about her, too, that made itself manifest in 
a smile of genuine happiness and pleasure, 
— a smile that was something more than 
a mechanical display of the teeth. Miss 
Crosman's first victory was in " looking the 
part" to perfection. She was at no pains 
to establish an illusion ; that came of itself 
at first sight of her. All that remained for 
her was to maintain the feelings of delight 
and approval and instinctive sympathy that 
were aroused immediately on her entrance. 



38 Famous Actresses. 

In comparing actors one's inclination is to 
award the prize of achievement to the por- 
trayer of mighty emotions. His work is so 
broad, so idealistically grand and noble, that 
its very massiveness makes an appeal to the 
imagination well-nigh irresistible. But the 
light comedian has a right to considera- 
tion, nevertheless. If not so great as the 
tragedian, he is at his best much finer. 
Moreover, he is nearer life as the average 
man knows it first hand, while the spirit of 
his work is more kindly, more grateful, and 
more helpful. The tragedian awes ; the 
comedian wins affectionate regard. As Nell 
Gwyn, Miss Crosman displayed the art of 
the light comedian at its best. Her work 
was without evidence of effort ; it was spon- 
taneous, free, and natural. Always moving 
in an atmosphere of daintiness, sprightliness, 
and effervescent joyfulness, she made Nell 
a creature of considerable variety and of 
potent fascination. Yet with her free spon- 



Henrietta Crosman. 39 

taneity Miss Crosman ever maintained the 
essential elements of repose, of mental poise, 
and of confidence in herself ; there was 
always present the underlying strength of 
technical sufficiency. In short, Miss Cros- 
man lived Nell Gwyn. 

The part itself was somewhat peculiar. 
It required a considerable range of expres- 
sion, and yet its moods were limited. Nell 
was pictured over and over again in practi- 
cally the same position — on one side the king, 
on the other the tool for Nell's jest, and in 
the middle Nell herself, the self-possessed 
mistress of the situation. That was Mr. Hazel- 
ton's stock situation, and in connection with 
this situation Nell's moods were fixed. She 
was never in a real difficulty ; she never felt 
the shoe pinch ; she not once sounded a note 
of sorrow nor even of fleeting pathos. The 
part was light comedy, and light comedy only. 

However, within its light comedy limits 
there was great variety, — at least Miss Cros- 



40 Famous Actresses. 

man made great variety, for I could easily 
imagine that the part might have been acted 
in a nervous monotone that would quickly 
have become wearisome. Miss Crosman had 
a rich appreciation of points, and she read 
remarkably well. Time and time again she 
got her laughs, — not so much by what she 
said as by the way she said it. That sort of 
comedy is rich — and rare, too. It is the com- 
edy of intelligent comprehension. Walking 
about the stage, wrinkling the eyebrows, and 
gesticulating with the hands are not such 
wonderful things to do. A competent stage- 
manager can readily train a novice in that 
sort of "acting," if it be worth his while. 
But the voice ! There is where the great 
acting comes from. A voice that interprets 
while it charms is the best of all gifts, and 
this Miss Crosman possesses. 

Henrietta Crosman was born in Wheeling, 
West Virginia, her father being George 




HENRIETTA CROSMAN 

As Nell Gwyn, masquerading as Beau Adair, in " Mistress 

Nell." 



M 



Henrietta Crosman. 41 

Hampden Crosman, an officer in the United 
States army. She came of good Puritan 
stock, the Crosman family having been one 
of the first to settle in Taunton, Massachu- 
setts, where her grandfather, also a soldier, 
was born. He was graduated from West 
Point in 1823, and during the Civil War 
was connected with the paymaster's depart- 
ment, and stationed at Philadelphia. He 
was the eldest son of Capt. George Cros- 
man, one of the earliest settlers of Taunton, 
Massachusetts. An uncle of Miss Cros- 
man's mother, Stephen C. Foster, had a 
national reputation as a song writer, among 
his compositions being " Old Folks at Home," 
" Come Where My Love Lies Dreaming," 
and "Uncle Ned." When Miss Crosman's 
father retired from the army, the family 
made its home in Cleveland, Ohio, and it 
was there, at a church entertainment, when 
she was nine years old, that Miss Cros- 
man made her first appearance on any 



42 Famous Actresses. 

stage as the little maid in "The Mistletoe 
Bough." 

She was educated at the Moravian Semi- 
nary in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. Being 
gifted with an exceptionally fine singing 
voice, she was sent, before financial troubles 
came, to Paris to study, but in her eagerness 
to forge ahead she ruined her voice. One 
day Miss Crosman heard her mother say 
that her Uncle Morrison, a brother of 
Stephen C. Foster, knew John Ellsler, who 
was then managing the Grand Opera House 
in Pittsburg, Pennsylvania. She saw in this 
circumstance a chance to get a start on the 
stage. She wrote to Mr. Ellsler and asked 
for an appointment, and this resulted in a 
meeting in Pittsburg, Miss Crosman going 
there from Youngstown, Ohio, where she 
was living. In order to pay her fare she 
painted water-colours and sold them. The 
manager first asked her to recite something, 
but she was not prepared for that, and so it 






Henrietta Crosman. 43 

was home again to study " something." She 
chose scenes from "Camille," and "Romeo 
and Juliet," and then painted more pictures 
in order to get back to Pittsburg. Mr. Ells- 
ler thereupon secured for her the opportunity 
to play Lettie, in Bartley Campbell's "The 
White Slave," in which she made her pro- 
fessional debut at the old Windsor Theatre 
in New York, in August, 1883, her salary 
being twenty-five dollars a week. 

The next season she became one of the 
original members of Daniel Frohman's Madi- 
son Square Theatre Company, appearing as 
Gladys Wincott in "The Rajah" the first of 
the season, and in "The Private Secretary" 
the remainder of the year. During the sea- 
son of 1885-86, she was under the manage- 
ment of George W. Sammis, in " Young Mrs. 
Winthrop," and the next season leading 
woman with Edward Collier, then starring, 
for the first time, in a repertory of legitimate 
plays. Leading business with Robert Down- 



44 Famous Actresses. 

ing followed. Miss Crosman began the season 
of 1888-89 as Frederick Warde's leading 
woman, but he released her so that she 
might join Augustin Daly's company in New 
York. Her principal part at Daly's Theatre 
was Celia in "As You Like It," which was 
highly praised. She left Daly's suddenly 
and unexpectedly, as has happened in the 
cases of many other actresses who have since 
become prominent. 

Miss Crosman's next two seasons were 
spent with Daniel Frohman's New York 
Lyceum Theatre Company, of which Georgia 
Cayvan was then the leading woman, Miss 
Crosman appearing as Lucille Ferrant in 
"The Wife," Phyllis Lee in "The Charity 
Ball," and Mrs. Stanmore in "The Idler." 
Previous to assuming this last part, she had 
been identified wholly with emotional work. 
Mrs. Stanmore, however, was light comedy, 
and was the first indication of her ability in 
that line. Coming next under the management 



Henrietta Crosman. 45 

of Charles Frohman, she was given a chance 
for two seasons to develop her talent in farce 
in "Wilkinson's Widows," "Junior Partner," 
"Gloriana," "The Other Man," and "Mrs. 
Grundy, Jr." The summer of 1894 was 
passed in stock work in Denver, Colorado, 
and that fall she joined " Burmah," a melo- 
dramatic production then playing at the Bos- 
ton Theatre. After that she was engaged 
in stock work, both in Pittsburg and Brook- 
lyn, though during the season of 1898-99 
she starred with Charles Dickson in "Mis- 
takes Will Happen." " Mistress Nell " was 
first produced in Denver, on June 3, 1900. 



CHAPTER III. 

MARY SHAW AND "BEN HUR." 

When William Young's dramatisation of 
General Lew Wallace's novel, " Ben Hur," 
was acted for the first time at the Broadway- 
Theatre, New York City, on November 29, 
1899, much praise was bestowed on the 
production as a spectacle, while but little 
account was taken of it as a play. This 
estimate was perfectly just, for Mr. Young's 
stage version was an unusual combination of 
unadulterated spectacle, drama, and opera. 
It was, perhaps, best comprehended under 
the classification of melodrama, the word 
being used less in its modern sense of vio- 
lent theatricalism, and more in its original 
meaning of drama with music. Considered 
46 



Mary Shaw and "Ben Hnr" 47 

purely as a play, however, " Ben Hur " could 
be ranked only on the plane of its acting, 
which was generally bad. It should be ex- 
plained that the acting of a scenic play is 
entirely according to the dictation of the 
stage-manager, who, in the case of a big 
spectacle like "Ben Hur," has a task fully 
as delicate as that of the speculator bent on 
the cornerning of wheat, of cotton, or of 
anthracite coal, with the aid of a small amount 
of capital and an unlimited amount of as- 
surance. In both cases the vital question, 
which must be guessed correctly to dodge 
disaster, is : Which way is the public going 
to jump ? 

After the great popular success of "Ben 
Hur " it is, perhaps, presumptuous to hazard 
the opinion that this vast spectacle was acted 
wholly in the wrong key. It may seem like 
perversely declaring that the sun never 
shines simply because one's attic bedroom 
window is perpetually shaded by a ten-story 



48 Famous Actresses. 

apartment house. Personally, I was agreeably 
surprised in the quality of " Ben Hur " as a 
play. It proved far more worthy than I 
expected. I do not mean that it was in any 
way "great;" it was far too episodical, too 
fragmentary, and too disconnected to stand, 
had it not been so well supported by the 
thorough acquaintance that the majority had 
with General Wallace's novel. Neverthe- 
less, it certainly had theatrical possibilities, 
and these were greatly enforced by its influ- 
ential religious appeal, its sturdy characters, 
and its unquestionable picturesqueness. 

The first act was all good theatrical ma- 
terial. There was vividness and force of the 
coarser sort in the gallery scene of the sec- 
ond act. The interviews between Simonides, 
his daughter, the Sheik, and Ben Hur, in 
the third act, had strength and variety. The 
whole episode that involved the discovery 
and healing of the leprous mother and daugh- 
ter was charged with considerable human 



Mary Shaw and " Ben Hur" 49 

interest and not a little emotion. The char- 
acters, too, were in nearly every instance 
more than ordinarily sympathetic, real, and 
individual. Moreover, they had at the same 
time the important element of romance. Ben 
Hur, Messala, Simonides, Arrius, the Trib- 
une, the Sheik, Esther, Iras, and Amrah 
were all good conceptions, which had incor- 
porated in them power and appeal. 

Yet, with these valuable qualities very 
much in evidence, " Ben Hur," as a play, was 
exactly what its actors made it. They could 
have raised it aloft as a drama of some im- 
portance, impressive in its parts and united 
in its whole. They could, through the per- 
fect union of personality and art, not only 
have emblazoned richly their own impersona- 
tions and the scenes in which they appeared, 
but they could also so subtly have placed 
before the spectator the ever discreet but 
ever present suggestion of the Saviour, as to 
have made marvellously strong the convic- 



50 Famous Actresses. 

tion of the actual presence of the Christ, 
thus giving the play peculiar power through 
its religious aspect. To avoid any possible 
misunderstanding, it should be stated that 
the religious element in "Ben Hur" was 
usually effective without being unpleasantly 
gross or palpably hypocritical. It was never 
forced, never permitted — except in the last 
act — to predominate, and, most important 
of all, it was never made absolutely tangible. 
It was used constantly and consistently as a 
spur to the imagination. 

"Ben Hur," it seems to me, could have 
been acted in a manner approaching artistic 
tragedy with firmness, dignity, and emotional 
power. Evidently those who staged it 
thought differently, however, for, with the 
single exception of the nurse Amrah, the 
atmosphere was always that of noisy super- 
ficial melodrama. Indeed, I point to Mary 
Shaw's work in Amrah as a striking argu- 
ment in favour of repression and depth. 









;: 


i 








. 


Lj 





MARY SHAW 
As Amrah in " Ben Hur. 



Mary Shaw and "Ben Hnr." 51 

There was seen force without distracting ef- 
fort, appeal without noisiness, unflagging 
interest without disturbing rush and flurry. 
The melodramatic actor, painting his picture 
with the most striking colours, and sticking 
with persistency worthy of a better cause to 
most violent contrasts, must sacrifice genuine 
feeling. He expends all his power in explo- 
sive recitation and broad unsuggestive ac- 
tion. He has nothing left in the way of 
imagination and subtilty, the two qualities 
that make the art of acting really worth 
while. 

Because it was vivid, intense, and imagina- 
tive, because it had strength, and depth, and 
sympathetic appeal, Miss Shaw's Amrah was 
without a rival in the cast. It is difficult — 
more than that, it is impossible — ; even ever 
so feebly to describe acting such as Miss 
Shaw displayed. There was not only splen- 
did perfection of technique, with all the satis- 
fying interpretation and understanding that 



ij2 Famous Actresses. 






came from mental and physical self-control 
and confidence, but there were also the 
equally important essentials, imagination and 
genuine emotion. One felt Amrah, not as 
a modern family servant, but as the dog- 
like servitor of the Orient, a creature 
who knew no will save that of her master, 
and whose love found expression in faithful 
obedience and absolute self-abasement. 

In its spectacular aspect "Ben Hur" was 
a very remarkable affair. The stage is, under 
ordinary conditions, a distinctly materialistic 
affair, with its prosaic curtain going up and 
down, its lights of many colours, its flies and 
its wings. As little expect to get poetry 
and fantasy in stage-settings as to find the 
rich foliage of the tropics at the North Pole. 
Still, the apparently impossible was, to a de- 
gree, obtained by the artist who designed 
the " Ben Hur " scenic effects. A taste of 
his quality was in evidence in the prelude, 
with its desert, where occurred the meeting 



Mary Shaw and "Ben Hur" 53 

of the three wise men under the brilliancy of 
the Star of Bethlehem. The scene, which 
was not marred by a single speech, was 
nothing short of exquisite, while the effect 
of great distance and mystic dimness that 
was obtained was veritable magic. 



CHAPTER IV. 



In the spring of 1900, Maude Adams put 
aside the fascinating witcheries of Lady 
Babbie in "The Little Minister," and, after 
a summer of hard study, donned in the fall 
the masculine garments of the Duke of 
Reich stadt, the ill-fated son of Napoleon, 
pictured by the French dramatist, Edmond 
Rostand, in his play, " L'Aiglon." The change 
was an astonishing one, more astonishing, in 
fact, than her successful hazard for a brief 
season of Shakespeare's Juliet. Nor was the 
experiment without its satisfactory reward of 
critical and popular approval. Public opin- 
ion, as with Miss Adams's Juliet, was, to be 
54 




MAUDE ADAMS 
As the Duke of Reichstadt in " L'Aiglon. 



Maude Adams in " UAiglon" 55 

sure, hopelessly divided. But it is safe to 
declare the actress was justified in her dar- 
ing by those who had hearts to feel as well 
as minds to understand. 

Exceedingly sorry most of us were, in our 
selfishness, that there ever had to be an end 
to Lady Babbie. It was difficult for us, who 
could never tire of the delightful Egyptian, 
— for us who had yielded so surely time 
and time again to her spell, — to imagine that 
any one under any circumstances might find 
her wearisome. Babbie was to us as some 
dear friend, a cherished companion, whom we 
loved very much, whom we wished always 
with us, whose happiness was our greatest 
pleasure, whose sorrows awoke in us keenest 
sympathy ; a friend whom we felt that we 
could trust to the end of time, who never 
disappointed nor wounded us, who never fell 
from our ideal, who returned sentiment for 
sentiment, who inspired us to look up and to 
seek beyond, whose sympathy was rich, full, 



56 Famous Actresses. 

and complete, whose influence was ennobling, 
purifying, and broadening. 

Tire of Lady Babbie? Tire of rippling 
laughter and of innocent mirth, of sweet, 
pathetic tears, of love, of youth, of beauty, 
of all that is most gracious and most to be 
desired? Tire of life that is charged with 
kindly humanity, with gentleness, life that is 
all springtime, fresh, clean, and joyous ? 
How could one tire of these great and good 
things ? 

Ah, so we thought, but there was another 
side to the picture, a view-point altogether dif- 
ferent, the view-point of the talented, the pre- 
ciously endowed little woman, who laboured 
so long and so faithfully, revealing to us this 
idealistic creation of the imagination. Again 
and again she lifted the curtain, although her 
personal interest in the scene must have long 
before departed. Conscientiously, with re- 
sourceful art, she regenerated the old, old 
character, lived anew the old, old emotions. 



Maude Adams in "L'Aiglon." 57 

We were delighted as ever. But she ? Weary, 
so weary ! How she must have welcomed a 
change ! 

It may have been fancy, but it seemed to 
me that I detected the slightest trace of in- 
evitable boredom in Miss Adams's last per- 
formances of Lady Babbie, a little loss of 
spontaneity, a loss so trifling that one hardly 
dared to hint that it was noticeable. I seemed 
sometimes to feel that Maude Adams was 
acting, that Babbie's laughter was not Maude 
Adams's laughter, that Babbie's tears were 
only make-believe, that her bewildering lights 
anu shades were there because Maude Adams 
willed that they should be. In short, I al- 
most dared to maintain that I had seen Maude 
Adams's art at work, something which, to 
me at least, had never before been revealed 
in this part. 

Do you wonder, when you consider the 
matter, that it should have been so ? Eight 
hundred performances of the same role, 



58 Famous Actresses. 

speaking the same lines, feeling the same 
things, hearing the same laughter, the same 
applause, bowing to the same curtain calls, 
and trying, trying, trying to be pleased with 
it all ! The real surprise was that Miss 
Adams stood it so long and remained so 
nearly the perfect Babbie that she was to the 
very end. It was not strange that one who 
had seen her impersonation many times 
should at the last have suspected a shade of 
artificiality. The marvel was that she was 
not frankly artificial, wholly mechanical. 

Maude Adams made her first appearance 
as the Eaglet in Louis N. Parker's English 
version of the Rostand play in Baltimore, 
Maryland, on October 15, 1900. In March, 
1900, Sarah Bernhardt produced " L'Aiglon " 
in Paris, and news of the tremendous effect 
that the drama had on those of French blood 
was immediately sent broadcast. "But the 
play will never be a success outside of 
France," was the accompanying verdict. 



Maude Adams in " L'Aiglon" 59 

How absolutely wrong was this qualification, 
it needed only a single experience with the 
great drama to perceive. "L'Aiglon" is 
indeed French, and I can well understand 
how the heart of a Frenchman must be torn 
to shreds and tatters, and his soul must be 
inspired and inflamed with the most enthu- 
siastic patriotism by the action and sentiment 
of the drama. But " The Eaglet " deals also 
with sweeping emotions, with mighty strug- 
gles, with stirring flights of the imagination, 
with vast enterprises, with a supreme tragedy ; 
and these belong no more to France than 
they do to the whole world. "The Eaglet, ,, 
therefore, is rightly to be classified with the 
universal drama. 

When Rostand gave his " Cyrano de Ber- 
gerac" to the public, there was general 
acknowledgment of his genius, and also gen- 
eral skepticism regarding his ability to repeat 
himself in force and strength and artistic 
merit in a second play. After seeing Richard 



60 Famous Actresses. 

Mansfield's Cyrano and Maude Adams's Eag- 
let, I was ready to testify that, from the stand- 
point of the theatre, he had accomplished in 
" L'Aiglon " the seemingly impossible. I 
was willing to acknowledge that " Cyrano de 
Bergerac" read better than "The Eaglet," 
but it seemed to me that " The Eaglet " acted 
better than "Cyrano de Bergerac." Acting 
literature is vitally different from reading 
literature. Reading literature is first of all 
an appeal to the mind, and through the mind 
to the imagination and to the senses. Acting 
literature is an appeal, first to the senses, 
then to the imagination, and last of all to the 
mind. In its appeal, the drama is a com- 
bination of music, which stimulates the 
imagination through the sense of hearing, 
and painting and sculpture, which stimulate 
the imagination through the sense of sight. 
All genuine drama — and it should be rec- 
ognised that all works written in the dramatic 
form are not drama — must be acted to be 



Maude Adams in " L 'Aiglon." 61 

complete. That is the condition or the re- 
striction or the privilege under which the 
dramatist labours. He is writing for the 
theatre — for actors and for spectators. It 
follows, therefore, that no person — however 
broad in culture, however catholic in taste, 
however experienced in stage technique — can 
judge finally and absolutely of the true worth 
of a play as literature or as art, until he has 
seen it competently presented on the stage. 

Until I saw " Cyrano de Bergerac " acted 
up to its full possibilities, as it was in Con- 
stant Coquelin's impersonation of the title 
part, I regarded "The Eaglet" as superior to 
" Cyrano "as an acting play. But that esti- 
mate was wrong. "The Eaglet," being more 
theatrical than " Cyrano," suffered less from 
feeble or mistaken interpretation. " Cyrano," 
on the other hand, has a humanity and a 
vitality that raise it distinctly above its com- 
panion piece. The difference is inherent, not 
superficial. It is the spirit that inspired 



62 Famous Actresses. 

"Cyrano," which counts. "The Eaglet" 
otherwise has points of excellence, fully 
equal to those of its predecessor. It, too, 
is an exhaustive exposition of character, and 
its action is placed against a background of 
marvellous suggestiveness and impressiveness. 
"The Eaglet" is the symbolic presentation 
of the spirit of a most complex and fascinat- 
ing people ; it is the pinning down to dra- 
matic exposition of the unconquered Napoleon. 
It is a richly sympathetic and a powerfully 
pathetic retelling of the " Hamlet " story of 
a soul struggle against overwhelming odds. 
Appreciating the truth, sympathy, sin- 
cerity, and subtilty of the composition of 
the character of the Duke of Reichstadt as 
a dramatic creation, I, nevertheless, do not 
feel that the Eaglet, himself, is the really 
significant factor in Rostand's play. The 
drama was not written, in my judgment, so 
much to present the Duke of Reichstadt as 
it was patriotically to inspire Frenchmen, and 



Maude Adams in "L'Aiglon" 63 

to set forth in symbolic form the ideal spirit 
of France as Rostand conceived it. So clearly 
evident has Rostand made his ideal that, not 
only can France perceive her own perfect 
image, and be enthused by it, but we outsiders 
can see it also and be fired and inflamed in 
a similar manner as is the Frenchman, 
though to a less degree. Whether this in- 
spiration would be felt so strongly in London 
with an audience of Britons, is doubtful. 
That it could touch an audience of Germans 
is practically impossible. But here in this 
country we have enough of the emotional 
vivacity of the Frenchman partially to under- 
stand him. The Frenchman is away ahead 
of us in honest sentiment. We are ahead of 
him in " horse " sense. He poses far more 
effectively than we do. We are too crudely 
and vulgarly self-conscious. 

In that most striking creation, the grena- 
dier Flambeau, it seems to me that Rostand 
gives us, as it were, a summing up of France 



64 Famous Actresses. 

— France wholly optimistic and wholly de- 
bonair ; France willing to risk everything for 
a bit of sentiment — foolish sentiment, you 
of stern practicability declare — even as 
Flambeau risked his life for the pretty sen- 
timent of guarding Napoleon's son, wearing 
the uniform of the old guard, bearskin on 
head and white-slung musket in hand ; 
France, light-hearted and frivolous and gay, 
but true and brave and faithful to the last 
breath. What a picture of a nation is this ! 
What a picture ! What wonder that French- 
men went crazy over Rostand's work ! The 
greater wonder is that they could strangle 
their emotion sufficiently to express it even 
crazily ! 

It was the unmistakable presence of the 
French spirit, in union with the mighty 
struggle of the Napoleonic spirit, that made 
the second act of " The Eaglet " so super- 
charged with emotional stress, with pathetic 
appeal, and with dramatic strength. In the 



Maude Adams in "UAiglon." 65 

Louis N. Parker version, used by Maude 
Adams, this second act was a combination 
of the second and third acts of the original 
play. This crowding together process re- 
sulted in momentary incongruity as regards 
time, but it had value in continued and unin- 
terrupted interest in the action. From the 
moment that Flambeau appeared in this act, 
until he perished by his own hand on the 
field of Wagram, he overshadowed the 
action. Helped on, buoyed up, urged for- 
ward by the constant optimism and faithful 
service of the irresistible grenadier, even the 
weak, wan, wretchedly hopeless Eaglet dared 
to try to fly — actually fluttered his wings 
alone for the distance from the tree to the 
ground. But it was all impossible. The 
Eaglet was not Napoleon — except in his 
own fevered imagination and in the equally 
fevered imaginations of his loyal friends. 
Struggle against the truth as he might, the 
Eaglet was compelled to acknowledge a 



66 Famous Actresses. 

spiritual as well as a physical master — that 
fixed quantity, Metternich. A Napoleon 
could never have known the helplessness of 
facing a will stronger than his own. 

This subtle phase of the Eaglet's char- 
acter — a phase that made the almost 
indomitable spirit and strength of will dis- 
played in the death scene nearly a complete 
victory — was most dramatically exposed in 
the mirror scene by Metternich, who pointed 
out ruthlessly and relentlessly every weak- 
ness, every taint, every flaw in the face, form, 
and character of the struggling, terrified boy. 
Nor could the pitiful little duke get the 
phantoms from his brain until he dashed 
the candelabra into the reflection of himself 
and smashed the mocking glass into frag- 
ments. 

Before writing a word regarding Miss 
Adams's impersonation of the Duke of Reich- 
stadt, I wish to avoid all misunderstanding 
by speaking my appreciation of her mental 



Maude Adams in " L Aiglon" 6 J 

power, of her art, and of her pluck. Whether 
she was wise to force her resources to, and 
even beyond, the limit, and whether, with 
her slight physique, she did not risk too 
much in undertaking such a tremendous 
part as the Eaglet, are debatable questions, 
perhaps, but they are really none of my 
business. To declare, however, that by her 
presentation of such characters as Juliet and 
the Duke of Reich stadt she injured or jeop- 
ardised her artistic reputation is out and 
out nonsense. Her Juliet I recall in certain 
of its phases as the best I ever saw. Re- 
garding her Eaglet it may be asserted that 
no loss of prestige was to be feared while 
Miss Adams was able to make apparent at 
all points her thorough mental command of 
Rostand's conception. With her ideal of the 
duke, her understanding of his character, 
her treatment of his complexities and per- 
plexities, her exposition of motives, of pur- 
poses and cross-purposes — with these there 



68 Famous Actresses. 

was little or no fault to be found. Mentally 
the Duke of Reichstadt was hers. This 
of itself was a task of no mean nor small 
order, for Rostand in the Eaglet portrayed a 
human being, and portrayed him with ana- 
lytical keenness, acumen, and completeness 
most uncommon. 

Miss Adams's first entrance was not effect- 
ive. Her physical tinyness and weakness 
made so overpowering an impression that the 
notion of royalty and of Napoleonic heritage 
did not at once strike home. Not until the 
line spoken by the Countess Camerata, 
"They say you do not know your father's 
history," which was answered by the duke, 
" Do they say that ? " did the fire begin to 
burn. From that point, through all the 
sharpening of wits and mental fence with 
court and ambassadors and during the mag- 
nificent outburst of infectious enthusiasm in- 
spired by the history lesson — leading phases 
of the first act ; through the magnificent 




MAUDE ADAMS 

As the Duke of Reichstadt, with Edwin Arden as Metter- 

nich, in " L'Aiglon." 



Maude Adams in " U Aiglon." 69 

second act, which never permitted the tears 
to leave the eyes, and the tremendous range 
of emotion involved in the episode of the 
painted soldiers ; in the meeting with Flam- 
beau and the interview with Austria's em- 
peror ; in the representation of the joy of the 
child, the fear of the child, and the defiance 
of the child; in facing the cool opposition 
of the implacable Metternich, and finally 
in the tremendous mirror scene, culmina- 
ting with its purely theatrical but none 
the less appalling crash of broken glass, — 
in every one of these moments of the first 
two acts Miss Adams was great. 

But the climax of the second act marked 
the climax of her emotional power. The 
third act of " The Eaglet " may be quickly 
passed by. It was picturesque enough, and 
it may have had a certain value as a halting 
place between the stress of the second act 
and the mighty emotionalism of the scene on 
the field of Wagram. Still, beyond its purely 



JO Famous Actresses. 

mechanical use in carrying on the story, it 
seemed dramatically worthless. 

The fearful scene on the field of Wagram 
was completely beyond Miss Adams's powers. 
She could not give physical expression to 
those imaginary terrors, and one felt them 
not. In that scene nothing short of the 
impressiveness of tragic power would do. 
Tragic power Miss Adams had not. The 
mechanics of the scene were beautifully con- 
ceived and executed. No apparitions were 
visibly shown, and the cries and wild shouts 
of phantom voices were so mingled with the 
soughing of the wind, that it was not diffi- 
cult to conceive of a fevered imagination 
conjuring these mysteries from what was 
really the droning roar of the gale. There 
were all the elements of terror present, and 
these were increased by the sense of loneli- 
ness and dreariness wrought by the setting. 
The full sweep of the stage was shown, with a 
perspective of six, eight, ten miles, — the only 



Maude Adams in " IJ Aiglon" Ji 

distant objects in sight being the little mound 
on which the terrified Eaglet wrestled with 
his soul, the stolid figure of the sign-post 
pointing the way to France, and in the fore- 
ground the dead body of the grenadier. 

Against this awesome and stupendous 
background stood forth the weak, feeble 
figure of the Duke of Reichstadt. It was 
a moment when domination of surroundings 
could be obtained only by the compelling 
sweep of supreme tragedy. Miss Adams 
failed to dominate, largely — almost wholly — 
because she lacked the brute force. The 
environment was too strong for her unfor- 
tunate physical limitations. 

What she lost in the Wagram scene she 
recovered in the death scene. This was in- 
describably pathetic, and the wan pitifulness 
of it was well-nigh heartrending. Here just 
those qualities that made ineffective the fear- 
inspiring hallucinations of the preceding act 
rendered vastly moving the bitter and vain 



72 Famous Actresses. 

fight of the little Eaglet against disease and 
death. One could feel the power of his will ; 
one could feel it straining and almost rending 
into shreds the weak, unresponsive muscles. 
The agony was the keenest emotional tor- 
ture for the spectator. 

Of light and shade, of touches of deeply sig- 
nificant comedy, of delicacies of subtilty and 
fine significance, there were many throughout 
the impersonation, and they all were admi- 
rable. Over the tragic figure of the Eaglet 
Miss Adams cast her magic mantle of pa- 
thetic appeal, made all the more powerful 
by contrasting tones of touching humour 
that were themselves almost weeping. Ex- 
cept in the instance of the field of Wagram 
pathetic appeal carried the day. 



CHAPTER V. 

AMELIA BINGHAM. 

To make plain the position that Amelia 
Bingham holds in the American theatre, her 
publicity bureau has consistently referred to 
her as an "actress-manageress," which, I 
submit, is a fearful thing to call any woman. 
However, the dilemma in which the genial 
press agent found himself when he tried to 
fashion a neat and compact label that should 
fit Miss Bingham's case is not fully appreci- 
ated until one attempts to do the same 
thing himself. The facts to be conveyed 
are that Miss Bingham is managing a 
theatrical company and acting in it at the 
same time, and that she is the only woman 
in the United States who is doing pre- 
73 



74 Famous Actresses. 

cisely those two things. In London men 
who both manage and act are termed 
" actor-managers,' ' and women in a similar 
line of work are designated "lady mana- 
gers," a combination that is even worse than 
" actress - manageress." Doubtless, if some 
original mind should invent a graceful 
phrase that comprehended the whole of 
Miss Bingham's versatility, she would be 
properly grateful and gladly adopt it. I 
have tried to be an inventor, but have not 
succeeded. 

Miss Bingham has made no secret of her 
ambitions in a theatrical way. Her reiter- 
ated purpose is to make the Amelia Bing- 
ham Company, which began its public 
existence on January 15, 1901, with the 
production at the Bijou Theatre, New York, 
of Clyde Fitch's comedy, "The Climbers," 
the standard stock organisation of the coun- 
try, a successor, in a way, to the Augustin 
Daly Company. Miss Bingham's enterprise 






Amelia Bingham. 75 

has thus far been conducted with business 
acumen, good sense, and considerable artistic 
enthusiasm. She has surrounded herself 
with a company of players of reputation, 
and she has produced an American drama 
of unconventionality and merit. When Miss 
Bingham decided to secure an original bit of 
dramatic writing, and not rely for her first 
success on a dramatised novel, Clyde Fitch, 
among others, was requested to submit a 
manuscript. It proved to be a " star " play, 
and was therefore refused. Miss Bingham 
desired a " stock " piece. 

"I was convinced — I always have been, 
for that matter — that ' the play's the 
thing,' " she said. " Authors seemingly 
could not comprehend that I wanted a play, 
not a part ; that I wished people to leave 
the theatre talking about the Amelia Bing- 
ham Company, rather than about Amelia 
Bingham alone. They could not grasp my 
intention simply to make Amelia Bingham 



y6 Famous Actresses. 

the trade-mark of the best stock company 
that I could get together." 

Finally Mr. Fitch showed Miss Bingham 
"The Climbers," which, originally written 
for the Empire Theatre Company, had been 
refused by Charles Frohman, and after that 
by nearly every other manager on Broadway. 
Miss Bingham liked the play, however, and 
had the courage to produce it. It proved 
a remarkable popular success. Referring to 
herself and her future, Miss Bingham con- 
tinued : 

" I love work — hard work. No conscien- 
tious actress with the interest of her man- 
ager at heart can get on without work. 
People who imagine that an actress can 
maintain a prominent place in the front 
rank of the vast theatrical army without 
ceaseless industry are misinformed. Not 
only must she study to improve her acting, 
but she must read, hear good music, become 
acquainted with the works of fine artists, do 




AMELIA BINGHAM 
As Blanche in " The Climbers," 



Amelia Bmgham. J J 

everything to stimulate that necessary qual- 
ity, imagination. 

"When I announced my intention to es- 
tablish my present enterprise, my friends 
attempted to dissuade me, telling me that I 
could never act a part, manage a theatre, 
and supervise my household. They declared 
that my health would not stand the strain. 
Not only have I found time to take care of 
myself physically, but I have performed all 
my duties, and, in addition, entertained my 
friends, read many plays, and kept abreast 
with the larger interests of the day. I am 
much interested in politics and finance, have 
continued my acquaintance with the best 
literature, and devoted considerable time to 
painting and music, accomplishments in 
which, during my school days, I had shown 
some proficiency. 

" What are my ambitions ? They are 
boundless for my company. It is my hope 
that some day the Amelia Bingham Com- 



78 Famous Actresses. 

pany will take the place of that organisation 
directed for so many years by Augustin 
Daly. He has always been to me the most 
admirable figure in the theatrical world. 
Shall I produce Shakespeare ? I fear not. 
Personally, I do not believe that the actor 
of to-day secures the training requisite for 
the successful interpretation of Shakespeare's 
plays. My own career is in some respects 
like that of the average actress. It has been 
of eight years' duration, and in that time my 
opportunities to participate in Shakespearian 
revivals have been few and far between. I 
believe thoroughly in plays of modern life if 
they are true to nature. I think our public 
in general likes to witness unconventional 
treatment of things that it knows about, 
possible elements in the lives of those near 
at hand. It is my intention to produce plays 
that will contain, in addition to verity, sur- 
prise. I do not want the cut - and - dried 
dramas of which the public is weary. 



Amelia Bingham. ?9 

" If it be a feasible plan, I hope to confine 
my efforts to the presentation of plays by 
American authors. Frankly, it is a difficult 
task to find them, but I mean to persevere. 
When I have my own theatre — I shall cer- 
tainly build one when the time is ripe for the 
project — I hope to make it the home of 
American drama." 

" The Climbers " dealt with well-defined 
phases of New York society. The action 
opened just after Mrs. Hunter and her three 
daughters, one of whom, Blanche, — played 
by Miss Bingham, — was married, had re- 
turned from the funeral of the man who 
had been the head of the house. Blanche 
and one daughter were unaffectedly grief- 
stricken, but the widow and the youngest 
daughter were chiefly concerned regarding 
their social future. Consequently, when the 
widow learned that her husband had died 
without leaving her a penny, there was an 
outburst, and the vulgarity of her nature 



So Famous Actresses. 

came bounding to the surface. In this first 
act occurred the scene, in which Mrs. 
Hunter and her daughter Clara disposed 
of their Paris gowns, now useless to them, 
to two fashionable callers. This episode, 
according to Charles Henry Meltzer, was 
not, strictly speaking, original. In the 
germ, he declared, it was invented about 
twenty years ago by the French dramatist, 
Henri Becque, and exhibited at the Theatre 
Francais, in " Les Corbeaux." 

"If Clyde Fitch had been able to elabo- 
rate the dramatic scheme indicated in his 
first act," wrote J. Rankin Towse, "he prob- 
ably would have written the best and most 
interesting American comedy of his genera- 
tion ; but he allowed himself to be tempted 
by motives of mere theatrical expediency, 
and abandoning satire for sensation, and 
character for incident, suffered the threads 
of an interesting and novel story to be lost 
in a coarse strand of striking but conven- 



Amelia Bingham. 81 

tional melodrama. Unquestionably the fune- 
ral scene is a hazardous experiment, and open 
to criticism on the- score of good taste ; but 
the purpose here is legitimate, if the demon- 
stration of it is a little too violent to be alto- 
gether artistic. It would be less shocking to 
delicate susceptibilities in the written page 
than it is in actual representation. The 
satire is fierce and crude, but it is wholesome 
and hits fairly one of the commonest and 
most contemptible forms of human hypocrisy. 
It is not even in the most remote sense a 
mockery of grief. The employment of it, 
dramatically, to throw into instant relief the 
different characters and dispositions of the 
assembled mourners, is an admirable device. 

" The suggested problem is, how these 
women would comport themselves, and how 
they would fare, when thrown upon their own 
resources by a clearly impending financial 
catastrophe. It is a situation full of infinite 
possibilities, worthy of the ingenuity of 



82 Famous Actresses. 

Pinero himself. The difficulties of work- 
ing out such a scheme in compact dramatic 
form would be prodigious, and perhaps it 
was the realisation of this fact, or mistrust 
of his own powers, that induced Mr. Fitch to 
shirk them altogether. Certain it is that, 
after the first act, the fate of ' The Climb- 
ers,' so far as it is affected by any individual 
character or conduct of their own, becomes a 
matter of altogether secondary consideration. 
The ruin with which they were threatened 
is averted, in some way not very lucidly 
explained, and the interest thereafter centres 
in the domestic infelicities of one member of 
the Hunter group — who is not a ' climber ' 
at all — and the efforts of her friends to pre- 
vent her husband, a reckless and unprincipled 
gambler, from ruining himself and everybody 
connected with him. It is not necessary to 
follow the purely melodramatic details of the 
story. They are marked by the exaggeration 
which too often accompanies a fertile inven- 



Amelia Bingham. S3 

tion, but they are good of their kind and are 
adroitly managed. Two of them are remark- 
ably effective. One of them is where the 
embezzler, after a Christmas entertainment 
in his luxurious home, is compelled to make 
confession of his crimes, in a darkened room, 
to the relatives he has robbed, and the other 
— which is, perhaps, the best individual 
scene in the play, certainly the strongest 
emotionally — is that in which an honour- 
able man, having betrayed, inadvertently, 
his secret love for the heroine to a jealous 
rival, lays bare his heart to the latter, and by 
appealing to her nobler instincts converts her 
from a state of veiled hostility to hearty 
friendship. The first of these episodes is 
purely melodramatic and of small artistic 
consequence ; the second sounds the depths 
of human nature and belongs to a much 
higher order of invention." 

Amelia Bingham — her name was Smiley 
before she married Lloyd Bingham, at that 



84 Famous Actresses. 

time an actor — was born in Hicks ville, Ohio, 
■ — "an Ohio Methodist," she called herself. 
" My father was a strict Methodist," she 
added, "and I was brought up to believe 
that, outside of the Methodist church and 
Sunday school, salvation was not to be 
thought of. I don't believe a member of 
my immediate family had ever been to a 
theatre, much less known an actor, before 
I startled and almost broke the collective 
heart of the town by marrying my husband, 
who was on the stage. It cut me to the 
quick to have the neighbours turn against me 
as they did when I married. My brothers 
and sisters are sweet country people — the 
salt of the earth. They couldn't understand 
me, either. When I left at the time of my 
marriage, I was under a deep, big black 
cloud, I can tell you. 

"Those first visits home were painful. 
People turned their heads as I walked down 
the street. My best schoolgirl friend, my 



Amelia Bingham. 85 

lifelong chum, passed me and looked me 
square in the face as though I were a 
stranger. My old Sunday-school teacher 
had the courage 'to come to see me, and 
when he went away, he took my hand in his 
and said : « Amelia, I hear there are some 
good men and women on the stage. I hope 
so for your sake.' But as time went on, and 
Mr. Bingham and I continued to go home 
after each season, the neighbours began to 
be more friendly. Then one of them got 
in a hard place financially, and he wrote me 
such a pitiful, apologetic note, that it made 
everything plain to me. Well, I helped that 
neighbour out, and little by little we came to 
understand one another. Hicksville took 
Amelia Bingham back to its heart, actress 
though she was. I can't help loving the 
old town. I was born there, and when I die 
I want to be buried in the little cemetery, 
where my place is waiting for me in the 
family plot." 



86 Famous Actresses. 

Miss Bingham was educated at the Ohio 
Wesleyan University. Her first stage expe- 
rience was with McKee Rankin, with whom 
she went on a tour to the Pacific coast. Miss 
Bingham's first appearance in New York 
was made at the People's Theatre on the 
Bowery in "The Struggle of Life." In pur- 
suance of her spoken resolution, " to be the 
leading woman of a Broadway theatre in five 
years or quit the business," she refused offers 
for the road and determined to stick to New 
York. Her next engagement was at Niblo's 
in "The Power of Gold." Then she moved 
a little farther up-town to the Fourteenth 
Street Theatre, when she appeared in "The 
Village Postmaster." From there she ad- 
vanced to the American Theatre, playing 
in " Captain Impudence " and in revivals of 
the Boucicault dramas. Charles Frohman 
saw her and engaged her for "The White 
Heather " at the Academy of Music, and 
under his management came her triumphant 



^_ 



Amelia Bingham. Sy 

march into prominence. She appeared at 
the Madison Square in "On and Off" and 
"The Proper Caper," and at Wallack's The- 
atre in " At the White Horse Tavern " and 
"The Cuckoo." Then she was chosen to 
replace Jessie Millward in " His Excellency 
the Governor" at the Empire Theatre. 
During the season of 1899- 1900, Miss 
Bingham acted in New York and Chicago 
in the vacuous melodrama, " Hearts are 
Trumps." In addition to these New York 
engagements, Miss Bingham played for a 
time with the George Holland Stock Com- 
pany at the Girard Avenue Theatre, Phila- 
delphia ; in " Nature " at the Academy of 
Music, New York; in "The Capitol" at 
the Standard Theatre, New York, under the 
management of J. M. Hill in 1895, and at 
the Herald Square Theatre with the Mor- 
daunt and Block Stock Company in the 
summer of 1898. 

At the conclusion of the run of " Hearts 



88 Famous Actresses. 

are Trumps " in the spring of 1900, Miss 
Bingham, who was nervously worn out by 
the strain of constant appearances in un- 
congenial parts in melodrama, sailed for 
Europe with the intention of taking a long 
rest. There she was a surprised witness of 
the success which had rewarded the women 
who had undertaken the management of 
theatres. In England she found them put- 
ting up a formidable fighting front against 
their masculine competitors. She found the 
same to be true to a lesser degree in France, 
where Sarah Bernhardt was the most con- 
spicuous figure in the ranks of women 
managers. However, it was not until she 
returned home in the fall, and found that 
there was no suitable engagement in sight 
for her during the coming season, that she 
decided to emulate the example that she had 
discovered abroad, and realise the dream 
which is cherished by all players, — that of 
some day having a company of their own. 



Amelia Bingham. 89 

As Miss Bingham expressed it, "Once my 
decision arrived at, I outlined my scheme, 
arranged all the bewildering mass of detail ; 
in a word, found out just what I must do, 
then did it." 









CHAPTER VI. 

IDA CONQUEST. 

Although Ida Conquest, during the sea- 
son of 1 899- 1 900, was not nominally the 
leading woman of John Drew's company, 
presenting " The Tyranny of Tears," she 
was, because of her admirable impersonation 
of that original conception, Hyacinth Wood- 
ward, the most thoroughly discussed member 
of the cast. This Miss Woodward was a 
conception likely to excite controversy, and 
Miss Conquest acted her with notably real- 
istic art. Indeed, in illuminating and sug- 
gestive power, in sympathy and in sincerity, 
in simplicity and in directness, in freedom 
from self-consciousness, in rich sentiment 
and in artistic subtilty, her work was a most 
90 






Ida Conquest. 91 

grateful revelation of the best that the actor 
can offer. I do not deny that the character 
occasionally slipped away from her, but she 
gave so much, and the spirit behind it all 
was so admirable, that fault-finding seemed 
petty and unwarranted. 

It was strange and novel study of woman- 
kind that Haddon Chambers made in the 
character of this private secretary, Hyacinth 
Woodward. On her he lavished the cream 
of his imagination and his art, and he suc- 
ceeded in creating a woman, a creature of 
complexed and hidden motive, of not easily 
comprehended action, of great sympathy, of 
rare charm, and of abiding fascination. Un- 
doubtedly there were many who did not 
understand Hyacinth Woodward. They did 
not see why she should kiss her employer's 
picture ; they could not fathom her unso- 
phisticated frankness ; they were not able 
to find the focus of her outlook on life. In 
her Mr. Chambers suggested much and ex- 



92 Famous Actresses. 

plained little, and, consequently, the revela- 
tion of truth came only to the sympathetic 
student. 

Mr. Chambers succeeded so well in deline- 
ating an actual woman that he fooled com- 
pletely those who were accustomed to analyse 
a dramatist's creations by means of the labels 
which had been ostentatiously pasted on the 
foreheads of the puppets. An imaginary 
human being, who can be understood only 
through the exercise of a common human 
sympathy, or by means of the same psycho- 
logical methods that one uses in fixing the 
characteristics of the man or the woman 
whom one meets on the street, is to the 
thoughtless playgoer no character at all. 

Basing his judgment on obviousness and 
superficiality, more than one reviewer de- 
clared that Mrs. Parbury was the only char- 
acter in "The Tyranny of Tears." As a 
matter of fact, although she was the most 
easily understood personage in the drama, 



Ida Conquest. 93 

she was also one of the least worthy artistic- 
ally. Mrs. Parbury was theatrically effect- 
ive, but she was not genuine. She was a 
type. Hyacinth Woodward, however, was 
not a type ; she was a woman. The play- 
wright did not stand up before the multitude 
and proclaim through a megaphone the points 
in her mental and moral make-up ; he did not 
write out her motives in large letters on a 
blackboard. Still, he was not sparing in 
data for those that were able to read fine 
type. How suggestive was her story of early 
poverty ! Brought up in the country, — her 
father a minister, and she one of a family of 
thirteen girls, only one of whom had been 
fortunate enough to catch a husband, — she 
was as ignorant of men as she was of life 
conditions and problems. She had a pretty 
wit, a positive genius for sizing up human 
kind, and an astonishing frankness of speech. 
She looked back on her poverty-stricken 
youth with horror, and she talked about her 



94 Famous Actresses. 

childhood with cynical coldness and feigned 
heartlessness. Narrow as her view-point was, 
her judgment was instinctively sound. Her 
independence and the expanding atmosphere 
of her association with Parbury soon came 
to be indispensable to her. She would die 
before she would ever return to her home, 
she declared. Yet there were those who 
wondered that she fought back, instead of 
meekly submitting, when Mrs. Parbury or- 
dered her from the house. 

"I liked that article," said Hyacinth, 
referring to something that Parbury had 
written, "it was so masterful. Oh, I ad- 
mire strength." There was the key to her 
curiously indirect and still wonderfully 
simple feeling for Parbury — the feeling 
which led her thoughtlessly to kiss his 
photograph, and afterward to acknowledge 
without shame that she had kissed it. 
Toward Parbury' s intellect she had the at- 
titude of a hero worshipper. In his role of 



Ida Conquest. 95 

an author, he was her ideal of a man. For 
the condition of domestic martyrdom, which 
his wife's petty despotism and his own easy- 
going indulgence had forced upon him, she 
had the utmost contempt, softened by the 
regret that a man of Parbury's attainments 
should permit himself to be so set upon. 

Hyacinth's quick betrothal to the self-con- 
tained, sane, cynically surfaced man of the 
world, George Gunning, was very natural 
under the circumstances. He was the first 
man who had ever, to quote her own words, 
"looked on her as anything more than a 
machine." He was the embodiment of that 
masculine masterfulness which she so much 
admired. She had carried the burden of her 
future so long, and it was such a wearisome, 
humiliating burden, that she was willing 
enough to shift it on some one else's shoulders 
when the chance came. Moreover, she was 
an extremely practical young woman. She 
recognised fully the social advantages of 



g6 Famous Actresses. 

Gunning's offer of marriage, and she was the 
more ready, therefore, to follow her heart's 
inclination. 

An extraordinary character and a remark- 
able conception by itself, no less extraordinary 
and not a whit less remarkable was Miss 
Conquest's embodiment of Mr. Chambers's 
creation. Her understanding of the part was 
almost never at fault, and her impersonation 
throughout was exceptionally complete. She 
knew what she was about, and she fathomed 
Hyacinth Woodward. She seemed at times 
to be overdeliberate in action — too calm, 
perhaps. This was particularly apparent in 
some of her interviews with Parbury. Never- 
theless, it was a splendid exhibition of acting, 
one which stamped Miss Conquest as an 
artist in the best sense of that much abused 
word. 

Trained as she has been exclusively in 
modern light comedy, it would have been a 
remarkable achievement, indeed, if Miss Con- 



Ida Conquest. 97 

quest had been able to assume with complete 
satisfaction the mantle of romantic melo- 
drama, especially in a character so wholly 
superficial as Edward E. Rose made Dorothy 
Manners in his dramatisation of Winston 
Churchill's novel, "Richard Carvel." The 
actor is dependent upon the dramatist for his 
working material. The actor must have a 
definite substance around which he can wrap 
his personality and on which he may exercise 
his art. Exceptions to this rule there un- 
doubtedly are, but these exceptions are found 
chiefly in the field of eccentric comedy, though 
it is true that the born romantic actor will 
often accomplish wonders in parts that are 
the most flimsy artificiality. 

Miss Conquest's peculiar field is modern 
character, and the interpretation of this is 
diametrically opposed to romanticism. Mod- 
ern comedy acting is the faithful and con- 
stant piling up of details ; it is infinite 
attention to little things, and its effect is 



98 Famous Actresses. 

accumulative. It demands subtilty and in- 
sight, suggestiveness and logical develop- 
ment, breadth of mental understanding, but 
quietness and repose in action. Such acting 
must first of all appeal by its truth to the 
intelligence, and after that conviction fol- 
lows as a matter of course. Romantic act- 
ing, on the other hand, must reveal in a flash. 
It is an impression, not a growth. It must 
idealise. It must reach the heart, for it re- 
lies for conviction not on the mind but on 
the sentiment. It must be broad, strong, 
and sweeping, comprehensive, pregnant with 
personality and inexhaustible in pictorial 
resource. 

Now Miss Conquest, in spite of her old- 
fashioned garments, acted Dorothy Manners 
as if Dorothy were a character in modern 
comedy. She tried to interpret, whereas she 
should have tried only to impress and fasci- 
nate. She had a conception of Dorothy 
Manners, and it is ungrateful to record that 




IDA CONQUEST 
As Dorothy Manners in " Richard Carvel. 



Ida Conquest. 99 

this conception nearly proved fatal, for 
Dorothy Manners in the play was not capable 
of analysis. She might have been felt, but 
she was not understandable. Mr. Rose did 
not develop her ; he simply presented her as 
a fact. He did not make her act from defi- 
nite motives ; she moved only according to 
the melodramatic exigencies of the present 
condition. 

Try to analyse Dorothy, and there are pit- 
falls everywhere. First one must write her 
down a heartless coquette, who fully deserves 
all the trouble that comes to her. Yet, so to 
consider her, immediately knocks all the props 
from under Mr. Rose's drama. We must 
sympathise with Dorothy or else we have no 
use for "Richard Carvel." Again, try to 
find reasonable conviction for the motive set 
forth for her marriage to the Duke of Char- 
tersea. Her father owes the duke money, 
we are told, and she must save the family 
honour. She accepts the situation on the in- 

1 LofC. 



ioo Famous Actresses. 

stant. She demands no proof, and she makes 
no protest. She succumbs at once with 
spiritless childishness totally at variance 
with other well-defined phases of her char- 
acter. 

No, Dorothy Manners cannot be accepted 
as a study of character. She must be thrust 
upon one as an irresistible fascination. Miss 
Conquest might have done for Dorothy Man- 
ners what Mary Mannering did for Janice 
Meredith. Janice also defied analysis, but 
that did not prevent her from being a tri- 
umph of personal appeal. 

The most striking thing about Miss Con- 
quest in this part was a dark-coloured wig, 
which robbed the actress most strangely of 
her individuality. Nor was she as success- 
ful in depicting coquetry as one would have 
expected. When Miss Conquest had a 
chance to be sincere — there were several 
opportunities in the inn scene of the second 
act, and in the scene at the duke's house in 



Ida Conquest. 101 

the third — she showed a hint of her capa- 
bilities. The part, however, was fantastic 
and unreal. Miss Conquest is essentially a 
portrayer of human beings. 



CHAPTER VII. 

PHCEBE DAVIES. 

A curious phenomenon of the theatre 
in this country is the fixed popularity of the 
so called "rural" drama. Melodrama in all 
its other forms, from the blood-curdling 
thrills of the Bowery, to the reality-racking 
adventures of chivalric nobility, has its ups 
and downs. Not so with the " rural " drama ; 
that goes on for ever. It is almost unneces- 
sary to note instances. There are "The 
Old Homestead," life-long companion of 
Denman Thompson, actor transplanted to 
the stage from New Hampshire ; and the 
prototype of "The Old Homestead," "Old 
Jed Prouty," to which Richard Golden always 
returns after experiments in other directions 




PHCEBE DAVIES. 



Phcebe Davies. 103 

have made him impecunious ; " Shore Acres," 
the best of them all, and its companion piece, 
" Sag Harbour ; " " The County Fair," Neil 
Burgess's most cherished possession ; " The 
Village Postmaster," " Blue Jeans," and 
finally, "'Way Down East," quoted on the 
playbills as written by Lottie Blair Parker 
and elaborated by Joseph Grismer, which 
from 1897 to 1 90 1 served to exploit the 
talents of Phcebe Davies, an excellent, if by 
no means great, emotion actress. 

"'Way Down East" achieved its great 
popular success by clinging closely to con- 
ventionalities. It pleased the great majority, 
because it gave enough touches of life to 
flatter a crude sense of realism, and then 
padded thickly with gross sentimentality and 
ordinary virtue, which appealed to an unreason- 
ing sense of right and justice. " 'Way Down 
East " suggested real life only in a super- 
ficial and external way. There was no hint 
of the heart and soul of the people, such as 



104 Famous Actresses. 

can be found in James A. Heme's plays. 
Indeed, life was portrayed by means of cari- 
cature rather than by honest representation 
or imitation. Nevertheless, however rough 
the method, there was no question of its 
effectiveness. Under ordinary circumstances, 
even the hardened theatregoer could not 
escape wholly its impression of reality. 

In the matter of sentiment, " 'Way Down 
East " belonged to the E. P. Roe school of 
literary thought. The downfall of Anna 
Moore was, in its essentials, a very human 
and even a very tragic story, just as the 
downfall of Tess in Thomas Hardy's novel 
was human and tragic. But notice the E. 
P. Roe touch that made the story " proper " 
but destroyed absolutely its truth. When 
Tess sinned, she sinned because she was a 
woman who loved and was ignorant. One 
was led to believe that such was the case 
with Anna Moore, until, to bring about a 
wedding without shocking any one's ideas 



Phcebe Davie s. 105 

of propriety, he was informed that Anna 
Moore did not sin at all, but was deceived 
by a mock marriage. This was poor art and 
poor law as well, and it killed immediately 
any strength that the theme of the play 
might have possessed ; but it also made 
" 'Way Down East " immensely popular with 
the person to whom its sponsors catered, the 
average theatregoer. 

By her impersonation of Anna Moore Miss 
Davies plainly demonstrated that she had 
in full measure the great gift of sincerity. 
The part was almost a monotone — with one 
single comforting exception — from first to 
lpst the persecuted, long-suffering female, 
who, smitten on one cheek, turns with 
pathetic patience the other to the hand of 
the smiter. The single exception to the rule 
of non-resisting meekness came at the end of 
the third act, just before Anna disappeared 
in the whirl and rush and rattle of the most 
famous snow-storm that ever stormed regu- 



106 Famous Actresses. 

larly eight times a week. On this carefully 
prepared occasion Anna slashed out in a 
fashion that won for her genuine respect. 
She showed that she had some spirit, after 
all ; that she was not wholly milk and mush 
sweetness, and for the first time one saw a 
chance of happiness for the bucolic David 
Bartlett should he marry her. 

These long-suffering, never-hit-back char- 
acters are a libel on humanity. There is 
E. S. Willard's favourite, Tom Pinch, that 
miserable specimen of a man who lets every- 
body in creation tread on his toes, taking as 
the reward of conscious virtue bucketsful of 
tears from the weakly sentimental mortals in 
the audience. When we see the pathetic 
smile quivering on the corners of Tom Pinch's 
mouth, we murmur, " Beautiful ! Beautiful ! " 
and when Pecksniff gives him a well-deserved 
dig in the ribs we cry out in sympathy, 
" Oh, the poor fellow ! Isn't that too 
bad ! " But, honestly now, what would you 



Phcebe Davies. 107 

think of Tom Pinch out in the world ? 
Would you ever dream of considering him in 
any particular whatsoever the ideal man ? 
No, you would put him down as a harmless 
idiot, good enough, perhaps, to do chores 
about the house under the supervision of the 
tyrannous cook. 

Anna Moore was not as bad as Tom Pinch, 
largely because one can stand patient suffer- 
ing in a woman better than he can in a man 
— it is more usual. But, even in a woman, 
this sentimental characteristic of never strik- 
ing back does not amount to much outside of 
novels and plays. It is not genuine human 
nature. It is not an evidence of sportsman- 
like spirit. Mankind loves a fighter, and it 
is to the fighter that all the rewards of life 
go. Turning the other cheek is a theory in 
which no one seriously believes. There are 
many reasons why one may not find it neces- 
sary to return a blow with a blow, but there 
is absolutely no reason why one should lie 



108 Famous Actresses. 

down and let another fellow walk over him, 
simply because the other fellow, confidently 
masterful, demands, with insolent assurance, 
one's person for a promenade. 

All the foregoing does not deny the 
powerful appeal to inconsistent humanity 
that a purely fictitious, passive sufferer, like 
Anna Moore makes, particularly if the char- 
acter be placed before one in the disguise of 
a personality so thoroughly sympathetic as 
that of Phcebe Davies, whose temperament 
is of itself tear-compelling, and whose sincer- 
ity is absolutely unmistakable. Miss Davies 
is not an actress of wide range ; but the 
comparatively few notes of emotional stress 
within her range are strikingly well con- 
trolled and undeniably effective. I noticed 
in her work but one false note, and I am not 
sure whether that was her fault or mine. 
Her sobbing at the end of the second act, 
after she had told David that she could 
be no man's wife, struck me as forced and 



Phoebe Davie s. 109 

unnatural. However, this may have been 
my personal prejudice against that method of 
expressing overpowering emotion. 

But, after all, the really remarkable feature 
of her work was the fact that for three 
successive years she gave us an Anna Moore 
that was fresh, sincere and spontaneous, 
whose mechanics were hidden and whose 
appeal was undiminished. In this particular 
Miss Davies is strikingly different from Mrs. 
Fiske, whom to see twice in the same part 
means — for me, at least — complete disillu- 
sionment. The first time one experiences 
Mrs. Fiske in a new character, the impres- 
sion gained is one of marvellous spontaneity 
and striking reality. After a second experi- 
ence with the same part, however, one comes 
away fully convinced that the actress is noth- 
ing but an elaborate system of mechanics. 
With Miss Davies, however, the second and 
even the third impressions are practically the 
same as the first. Miss Davies acts from 



no Famous Actresses. 

within, outward. She recreates her charac- 
ter every time she presents it on the stage. 
Mrs. Fiske, on the other hand, creates her 
character once, and after that she copies 
the original creation down to the minutest 
details. Speaking of this feature of her 
work, Miss Davies said : 

" You cannot imagine how difficult it is to 
be impressed with any semblance of meaning 
in lines which have been repeated so often. 
Despite my best efforts, occasionally I catch 
my mind straying from the words even while 
I am speaking them. Of course, anything of 
the kind is fatal to the sincerity and genuine 
feeling which are so much in an impersona- 
tion like that of Anna. In order to overcome 
the tendency, I have committed to memory 
poems which had the power of arousing me, 
and have recited them to myself immediately 
before beginning my work in the third act 
of the piece. A dainty bit, entitled 'The 
Rosary,' served for awhile, and then I took 



Phoebe Davies. in 

refuge in Paul Laurence Dunbar's beautiful 
poem, 'The Sun.' When each had become 
merely a collection of phrases, I took to 
carrying this book about with me, and I read 
from it during each of the intermissions." 

Miss Davies held up to view a copy of 
"The Story of an African Farm." 

"My husband, Joseph Grismer," she con- 
tinued, "is very particular that the people 
under his direction shall constantly be 'in 
the picture,' by which he refers to that 
sympathetic interest which is broken by 
incongruous interruption. Mr. Grismer has 
requested frequently that the 'dumb show' 
conversations conducted in his dramas be 
relative to matters which might be discussed 
aloud with perfect consistency. He declares 
that it is possible to think almost along the 
lines laid down by the author, and I have 
learned that his ideas on this subject are of 
practical value. We " — Miss Davies alluded 
to the " 'Way Down East " company — " used 



112 Famotis Actresses. 

to have a David Bartlett who, during Anna's 
attempt to attract the attention of the 'Squire, 
who has just ignored her, would whisper: 
<Ah, father, been hanging around the gro- 
cery.' Invariably that remark would rob me 
of my power of concentration, and ultimately 
I was obliged to beg that young fellow to be 
more considerate. Personally, I try hard to 
keep constantly in touch with the' character 
I am portraying. When the 'Squire refuses 
to look at Anna and she crosses to the other 
side of the room, I murmur to myself : * It is 
a mistake ! It is a mistake ! He did not 
see me ! ' Then when the girl stands before 
him and he remains silent, I am prepared for 
the glance of dread and the gasp for which 
you have been good enough to praise me. 
Were I to rouse myself from cold indifference 
the effort would be impossible. 

"Both Mr. Grismer and I laugh with 
Jerome K. Jerome at the mummer who 
pretends to forget himself in his r61es, but 



Phoebe Davies. 113 

a kind of enthusiasm bordering on hysteria 
has a great deal to do with the reaching of 
dramatic heights. An author scarcely could 
leave a cup of ale and a political discussion 
to resume writing a climax, and so a player 
must work up to the apex to be reached. It 
has been told of Macready that, before com- 
ing to the stage for the simulation of fury, 
he would draw his sword and madly attack a 
ladder placed in the first entrance for that 
purpose. Salvini employed his time during 
waits striding up and down in the wings, a 
custom with which Forrest is also credited. 
Sarah Bernhardt will not receive visitors 
during the progress 01 a piece. And if none 
of these great artists was or is able in a 
moment to go from the practicalities of every- 
day life to a grand passion, need I be ashamed 
at my failure readily to lose myself in a part 
which I have played three years ? " 

Phoebe Davies was born in Wales, but her 
importation was accomplished when she was 



114 Famous Actresses. 

only seven years of age, and the credit of it 
belongs to her father, a naturalised American 
citizen, who had been among the forty-niners 
in California. The child, whose whole ex- 
perience as a theatregoer had been encom- 
passed by a brief afternoon at the Princess, 
in London, soon exhibited strains of dramatic 
talent, together with a decided leaning toward 
the playhouse. 

She grew into womanhood in San Francisco, 
and her first appearance was made privately 
before David Belasco, then stage-manager of 
the Baldwin. A scene from an old tragedy, 
called "A Mad Wreck," had been selected 
as a test, and the girl, still new to her teens, 
recited it with such emotional strength that 
she was assured of a part in the next Baldwin 
production. Unfortunately, illness prevented 
her from taking advantage of this opportunity. 
Though her parents were not pleased at her 
histrionic ambitions, and insisted that she 
remain at school, Miss Davies persevered in 



Phcebe Davies. 115 

her attempts to secure a hearing, and finally 
succeeded in making her debut with the 
California Stock Company. 

"Adolph Chalet," the piece which served 
to bring her to the fore, was written by a 
local dramatist, named Cipricio, and the cast 
employed included such skilled favourites as 
Osmond Tearle, Gerard Eyre, and Jeffreys 
Lewis. Miss Davies had the unimportant 
part of Marie, and scarcely was mentioned in 
the criticisms. However, she was retained 
with the organisation, and forged ahead with 
a steadiness more convincing than would 
have been more speed. A short time after 
playing Marie in " Adolph Chalet " she acted 
Nadia in "Michael Strogoff." For this 
impersonation she was praised heartily. 

The real foundation of Miss Davies's 
present success, however, was not laid 
until considerably later, when she obtained 
an engagement at the Baldwin. There, 
under the eye of the greatest director liv- 



n6 Famous Actresses. 

ing, and in touch with the most consummate 
artists of their period, she received training 
not to have been had anywhere else in 
America. Ernesto Rossi, the celebrated 
Italian tragedian, came to San Francisco, 
and Miss Davies ventured Regan to his 
King Lear, the Player Queen to his 
Hamlet, and Lady Angela in his per- 
formance of " Kean," the piece from which 
Charles Coghlan adapted "The Royal Box." 
W. E. Sheridan cast her for Prince Arthur 
when he appeared at the Baldwin in " King 
John," for Lady Anne when he did " Rich- 
ard III.," and for Juliet when he essayed 
Mercutio in " Romeo and Juliet." At the 
age of seventeen she played Maritana oppo- 
site Don Caesar de Bazan of the elder Charles 
R. Thorne, who was then seventy-one. 

In the intervals between the departure of 
one celebrity and the arrival of another, Miss 
Davies was given all sorts of parts in all 
sorts of pieces. She appeared in border 



Phoebe Davies. 117 

drama and in society comedy ; ranged from 
the characters of Shakespearian gentle- 
women to Rankinian hoydens. Many of her 
undertakings were not important. Charles 
Couldock introduced "Hazel Kirke" to the 
patrons of the Baldwin, and Miss Davies was 
seen in the titular character. She was lauded 
somewhat extravagantly for her work in sup- 
port of Jennie Lee, whose Little Joe, in 
Dickens's "Bleak House," was one of the 
finest delineations of the time. She was 
applauded for her Mabel Vane in "Peg 
Wofrmgton," and for her Maria in "The 
School for Scandal." Finally, she stirred 
genuine enthusiasm by her creation of the 
principal part in Clay M. Greene's "Chispa." 
A San Francisco manager offered to bring 
her East, and to present her to New York 
as a star. Miss Davies declined. Instead, 
she remained in California and married 
Joseph Grismer, who was then leading man 
at the Baldwin, and now is best known for his 



n8 Famous Actresses. 

share in preparing " 'Way Down East " for 
the stage. Shortly after their wedding, Mr. 
Grismer retired from the Baldwin Theatre, 
taking with him Miss Davies, who became 
his co-star in the Grismer-Davies Company. 
This organisation toured over a vast expanse 
of territory, and made a small fortune for its 
proprietors. Just prior to its formation, in a 
cast specially put together by Charles Hoyt, 
the young actress originated Dot in "A 
Midnight Bell," the part afterward success- 
fully played in the East by Maude Adams. 

With the Grismer-Davies aggregation she 
figured prominently in a repertory which 
included "The Burglar," "Fairfax," "Lights 
and Shadows," "The World Against Her," 
"The Tigress," "The Long Strike," "Rose- 
dale," "The Streets of New York," "Monte 
Cristo," "Enoch Arden," "The Wages of 
Sin," and a version of "Called Back," for 
which Mr. Grismer himself was responsible. 

In March, 1889, "The Calthorpe Case," 



Phoebe Davies. 119 

an English melodrama by Arthur Goodrich, 
had its first production in this country at the 
Alcazar Theatre in San Francisco, and Miss 
Davies was seen as Mabel Desmond. Of 
her delineation a Calif ornian wrote : " The 
character is one in which Sarah Bernhardt 
in one direction and Fanny Davenport in 
another would find ample scope for their 
powers, and I doubt whether Miss Davies 
did not as well as could have either." This 
praise was probably a bit extravagant. 

During the year 1893 Miss Davies was 
brought to New York and exploited as a 
prodigy. She made her Eastern ddbut at 
the Broadway as Georgia Gwynne in "The 
New South," and was a disappointment. 
Slight opportunity was given her in the 
piece, and she found even slighter in 
the presentation of "Humanity," her next 
effort. It was reserved for "'Way Down 
East " to be the flint on which Miss Davies 
was to strike the fire of general recognition. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

MRS. FISKE AS BECKY SHARP. 

In her acting Mrs. Fiske illustrates most 
forcibly the great effectiveness of tempera- 
ment and personality combined with intelli- 
gence and adequate technique. She is quiet 
and suppressed in method, racking one 
through the hypnotic influence of her inten- 
sity. Without the tremendous temperamen- 
tal force with which her character expositions 
are charged, her work would appear crude 
and artificial, if not, indeed, unintelligible. 
That this is true, one may easily determine 
for himself by witnessing the same imperson- 
ation several times in succession. 

Personality supplies the convincing power 
of acting ; method governs the application of 




14 



MRS. FISKE 
As Becky Sharp in " Becky Sharp." 



Mrs. Fiske as Becky Sharp. 121 

personality ; art, which \s> nothing more than 
a combination of dramatic instinct and accu- 
mulated experience, polishes, rounds off, and 
displays to the best advantage both person- 
ality and method. Mrs. Fiske's method and 
art are the results of a stage experience that 
began as soon as she could talk and walk. 
They are both absolutely her own, based in the 
first place on a unique personality, and nur- 
tured by years of practical application in a 
range of impersonations far more comprehen- 
sive than that covered by any player of her 
age on the American stage. No one taught 
Mrs. Fiske her method and her art, and she 
can teach them to no one. In her case they 
are right, but for a youthful enthusiast she 
is the worst possible model. 

Mrs. Fiske appeared for the first time in 
" Becky Sharp," the comedy which Langdon 
Mitchell founded on William Makepeace 
Thackeray's novel, "Vanity Fair," in Mon- 
treal on September 4, 1899. There is really 



122 Famous Actresses. 

very little use in bothering oneself about 
Mr. Thackeray in connection with Mr. Mitch- 
ell's play. Mr. Mitchell, to be sure, took 
unto himself ■ the names of many of Mr. 
Thackeray's best known personages, and Mrs. 
Fiske's actors grasped a few of the most 
obvious traits of those same personages. 
Mr. Mitchell ^also saw fit to handicap himself 
with a fair assortment of the happenings 
invented by Mr. Thackeray. However, Mr. 
Mitchell jumbled these happenings sadly, 
in a manner that would not have pleased 
Mr. Thackeray at all, and doubtless did not 
please the faithful among Mr. Thackeray's 
admirers, who saw " Becky Sharp " with the 
idea that they were going to have set before 
them a dramatic replicate of " Vanity Fair." 
As a matter of fact, " Becky Sharp " had 
very little of Thackeray in it. It is just as 
well, therefore, to throw aside at once all 
notions of Mr. Thackeray and his works and 
settle down to finding out what there was in 



Mrs. Fiske as Becky Sharp. 123 

Mr. Mitchell's play that made it so very en- 
joyable. I think, if we study the play long 
enough and pry deeply enough into the mys- 
tery, we shall perceive that there really was 
nothing enjoyable — and, for that matter, 
little of anything substantial — about the play, 
considered entirely by itself. It was truly one 
of the most colourless dramas, from first to 
last, that ever was put upon the stage. Yet, 
in the face of this trustworthy fact, I am 
going to declare that I have passed few 
evenings at the theatre more delightful than 
the several for which "Becky Sharp" was 
responsible. Mrs. Fiske explained the para- 
dox, — Mrs. Fiske, whose captivating imper- 
sonation of Becky Sharp (whether it was 
Mr. Thackeray's Becky Sharp or Mr. Mitch- 
ell's Becky 'Sharp or Mrs. Fiske's Becky 
Sharp, I do not know and I do not care) in- 
spired rhapsodies. One is tempted to spread 
on paper a synonym book of adjectives, — 
brilliant, sparkling, scintillating, that sort of 



124 Famous Actresses. 

thing, — but these, after all, are merely super- 
ficialities ; they convey an idea of the man- 
ner, but they give no notion of the spirit of 
Mrs. Fiske's characterisation. They tell noth- 
ing of the marvellous way in which her con- 
ception of Becky got across the footlights, nor 
of the wonderfully sympathetic understanding 
of the character that was vouchsafed those 
who sat in orchestra chairs. Never knew I 
insincerity to be shown with such convincing 
sincerity. 

Mrs. Fiske never glossed Becky's failings, 
— Becky's heartlessness, her selfishness, her 
flattering cajolery of her easy victims, her 
falseness to every one and everything except 
herself, — yet she never sacrificed Becky's 
charm. Even we mere lookers-on, while 
Becky played her game and moved so boldly 
her pawns and knights and bishops, felt her 
fascination, and, feeling in ourselves the spirit 
of the gambler, or perhaps being tempted 
by the brute desire to be master, we realised 



Mrs. Fiske as Becky Sharp. 125 

that the satisfaction of conquering her was 
worth running the risk of being conquered 
by her. 

In this one particular of exciting sym- 
pathy, Mrs. Fiske certainly caught the spirit 
of the Thackeray Becky Sharp, that bewitch- 
ing sinner, whom one mentally condemns 
while he is sorry for her from the bottom of 
his heart. Yet there was little pathos in Mrs. 
Fiske's creation. Her Becky was clear pluck 
and grit all the way through. Just once she 
sat down before the fire and philosophised, 
wondered if any one ever got in this world 
exactly what he wanted, or ever wanted ex- 
actly what he got. There was pathos there. 
Again one felt its touch when Becky was 
face to face with Rawdon Crawley after her 
misadventure with Lord Steyne. There was 
no reason why one should be sorry for her ; 
if any one merited pity, it was Crawley, not 
Becky. Yet against his sense of justice one's 
compassion was for the woman. 



126 Famous Actresses. 

Still, this Becky rarely condescended to 
sentiment ; she would far rather fight. She 
lived by pitting her woman's wit against the 
world. Her joy was in the contest, and 
she would rather fight and be beaten than 
not to fight at all. She always was beaten, 
too, and she knew that she always would be 
beaten, but she did not care — at least, not 
after the first bitter moment of disappoint- 
ment in defeat. She was, indeed, more happy 
down at the bottom, where there was nothing 
about which she could hold an illusion, than 
she was after she had made her way by hook 
or crook into social recognition and could say, 
" Poor fool I ! And I really believed that 
the gay world was gay." 

Nothing except the rarest union of actor 
and part could have made possible the im- 
pression left by Mrs. Fiske in this character. 
It was an instance of complete identification. 
I do not say that Mrs. Fiske met my precon- 
ceived notions of Thackeray's Becky Sharp, 



Mrs. Fiske as Becky Sharp. 127 

but I do believe that she so fastened herself 
on the " Vanity Fair " character that, for the 
future, the Mrs. Fiske Becky Sharp and the 
Thackeray Becky Sharp will be inseparable. 
In Langdon Mitchell's play, Becky Sharp 
was twisted this way and that for the express 
purpose of exhibiting all her manifold and di- 
verse characteristics. During the first act we 
saw her artful wheedling of the acrious Miss 
Crawley, her cutting wit and biting sarcasm, 
her premature snaring of Rawdon Crawley, 
and the fascination she exerted on two such 
widely different personages as Sir Pitt Craw- 
ley and Pitt, his son. It was an act of bril- 
liant comedy, but an act of little value as an 
introduction to a play. Again, in the second 
scene, which showed the ball preceding the 
battle of Waterloo, the exhibition of Becky 
continued. This time it was Becky in 
society, a lodestone with tremendous at- 
tractions for every male being. Keen and 
ready of tongue, resourceful in the gentle art 



128 Famous Actresses. 

of subtle flattery, mentally alert and marvel- 
lously accurate in her estimate of human 
nature, Becky ruled her little foppish world 
with despotism that made her the hated of 
every woman in sight. Finally, she impu- 
dently accosted Lord Steyne, and at last we 
felt that the action was under way. 

Unexpectedly, however, there comes a halt. 
Becky has retired to the background, and 
the most prominent thing in view is Joseph 
Sedley laboriously stepping out a dance. We 
listen to the chattering hum of the small 
talk blending with the music. A courier, 
who enters unannounced, attracts the atten- 
tion. He makes his way up the broad stair- 
case at the rear, salutes, and communicates 
with his general, salutes again, and retires. 
An instant later a woman's scream pierces 
the monotonous buzz, buzz, buzz, of conver- 
sation. A moment of startled silence, and, 
after a general burst of merriment, the tone- 
less buzz of talk is resumed. Amelia thought 



Mrs. Fiske as Becky Sharp. 129 

that she heard the dull report of distant can- 
non. It was nothing. The courier reenters, this 
time with a companion. More salutes, more 
messages, salutes again, and the two pass out. 
But apprehension — almost unconscious ap- 
prehension — is forcing itself into the scene. 
Cannon thumping in the distance, cannon 
which no one hears definitely — not even we 
in the audience (which was a particularly 
suggestive stroke of stagecraft) — spread a 
shadow of menace over the scene. 

An exhausted soldier, mud-spattered and 
dishevelled, staggers into the hall and sprawls 
his way to the general's feet. In the follow- 
ing moment of silenced alarm, the thud of 
Napoleon's guns is distinctly audible. 

" Stop the music ! Stop the music ! " is 
the cry, and in the painful quiet all listen 
with fearful expectancy. It is the cannon ! 
Hark ! The bugle-call to arms ! Confusion, 
everywhere, officers dashing this way and 
that, sobbing farewells to loved ones, women 



130 Famous Actresses. 

panicky and hysterical, all half-crazed except 
Becky Sharp. 

" There they go," she remarks, as her 
husband's regiment passes by with measured 
cadence. "There they go to die for their 
country, while I am dying for my break- 
fast.'' 

With the third act the play proper — that 
is, the intrigue of Becky with Lord Steyne — 
comes to the front, and the climax of this 
act, the disillusionment of Rawdon Crawley, 
although conventional, is extremely effective. 
Mrs. Fiske, with marvellous power, pictured 
dread, fear, and despair, not by means of 
violent action, but simply by doing nothing. 
With the third act the play ended, but was 
not finished. We never knew how Rawdon 
escaped the bailiff, and returned to his rooms. 
We never knew what became of him or what 
happened to Lord Steyne. Becky we found, 
in a succeeding episode, which was called a 
fourth act, in the midst of a disreputable 



Mrs. Fiske as Becky Sharp. 131 

Bohemia, from which, when we left her, she 
apparently had a double chance of escaping. 

" Becky Sharp " was an impossible play, 
but Becky Sharp was a character that con- 
quered impossible plays. It was a brilliant 
contribution to the stage ; a scintillating 
comedy creation, which brought out into the 
bright daylight that peculiar caustic wit and 
that indescribable incisiveness of character 
exposition, which are so peculiarly Mrs. 
Fiske' s own. 



CHAPTER IX. 

HILDA SPONG. 

It is sincerely to be hoped that Hilda 
Spong will not be beguiled into embracing 
hurriedly some one of the many opportuni- 
ties to star that in the natural course of 
modern theatre management must seek her 
out. Of the making of stars there is no 
end, but of the making of actors, who some 
day or other will by right of ability be fitted 
for stars, there is none too great evidence. 
Miss Spong, it seems to me, is in the process 
of manufacture, a process which, I earnestly 
pray, may not be interrupted by the blan- 
dishments of the biggest letters on the three 
sheet posters. What fascinators these 
letters are, to be sure! But the wherefore 
132 




HILDA SPONG 



Hilda Spong. 133 

of this is not altogether easy to comprehend. 
It is true that the new star, if fortunate 
enough to strike a money-magnetising suc- 
cess, may add a trifle to his income, but this 
little extra cash means the killing monotony 
of a single part, and a breathless dance over 
the length and breadth of a land thickly 
studded with one night stands. Yet the 
player-folk will do it every time they get a 
chance, and I presume that Hilda Spong 
is no exception to the general rule. Even 
now she is "featured." The day that sees 
her starring in some play commonplace 
enough to be popular will be set aside for 
gentle weeping. Hilda Spong possesses the 
actor's crown jewel, versatility, and versatil- 
ity is something for which the star has not 
the slightest use. 

This young Englishwoman — and she is 
young even to the condition of youthfulness 
— has advanced with leaps and bounds since 
she gave us the first taste of her quality 



134 Famous Actresses. 

as Imogen Parrott, in the delightful Pinero 
comedy, " Trelawney of the Wells." Her 
Mrs. Bulmer, in "Wheels within Wheels," 
dazzled with its delicious light comedy and 
its charming womanliness, and made one 
curious regarding her ability in emotional 
work. That curiosity was amply gratified 
by her fine sincerity as Lady Beauvedere in 
"The Ambassador." Good opinion of Miss 
Spong's acting was further augmented by 
her appearances in " The Interrupted Honey- 
moon," although the piece itself was prac- 
tically a failure; in "A Man of Forty," 
which, however, afforded her but a single 
opportunity to make her quality felt ; and 
in " Lady Huntworth's Experiment," the 
first honours of which were easily hers. 

In personal appearance Miss Spong justi- 
fies the word " stunning." Still she is not 
a pretty woman — her nose will not allow it, 
though one might balance her regal blond- 
ness and her magnificent physique against 



Hilda Spong. 135 

this one unfortunate feature. However, there 
are attractions more potent than mere per- 
fection of face or of form, and these other 
attractions Miss Spong has in abundance, — 
a personality that makes immediate conquest, 
rich temperamental force, graceful carriage, 
excellent repose, refined womanliness, and, 
infusing and overtopping all, an unmistakable 
atmosphere of intelligence and mental self- 
control. Her sense of humour, moreover, 
is distinct and alluring. 

Hilda Spong was born in London, Eng- 
land, on May 14, 1875. I n l888 sne went 
with her parents to Australia. Her first 
appearance on the stage was made at the 
Criterion Theatre, Sydney, in 1890, in 
"Joseph's Sweetheart." She was then a 
member of the Brough-Boucicault company, 
and her rise from small parts to leading busi- 
ness was exceedingly rapid. She played in 
comedy, in melodrama, and in Shakespeare, 
some of her parts being Bella in " School," 



136 Famous Actresses. 

Rosalind in "As You Like It," Galatea in 
" Pygmalion and Galatea," Stella St. Clair in 
"A Million of Money," Hester Graybrook 
in " An Unequal Match," and the title parts 
in " Hazel Kirke " and " Sweet Lavender." 
When she was eighteen years old she made 
a starring tour in Australia and New Zealand 
as Rosalind, Juliet, Galatea, and other legiti- 
mate characters. She also acted the lame 
girl in "The Lost Paradise." 

Miss Spong's first appearance in London 
was made at the Drury Lane Theatre, under 
the management of John Coleman, in 1896, 
as the duchess in "The Duchess of Cool- 
gardie." Afterward she appeared in "The 
Kiss of Delilah," and she was also in the 
cast of "The Two Little Vagrants " in Lon- 
don. When " Trelawney of the Wells " was 
produced at the Court Theatre, in 1898, 
Miss Spong created the part of Imogen Par- 
rott, and it was in that character that she 
made her first appearance in this country 



Hilda Spong. 137 

in November, 1898, as a member of Dan- 
iel Frohman's Lyceum Theatre Company. 
" Trelawney of the Wells " was followed 
during the season of 1898-99 with " Amer- 
icans at Home" and "An Amateur Re- 
hearsal." Miss Spong is the daughter of 
Walter Brooks Spong, an exhibitor at the 
Royal Academy and the Royal Institute of 
Water Colours. 

It is a peculiar fact that "Trelawney of 
the Wells," although plentifully supplied 
with local colour, was only a moderate 
success in London, while in this country, 
as presented by the New York Lyceum 
Theatre Company, it was one of the features 
of an unusually brilliant theatrical season. 
To account for this we have the statement 
of William Archer, the English critic, that 
the comedy was much better acted here than 
it was in London. The time of the drama 
was in the early sixties, just before the genius 
of Tom Robertson partially lifted the Eng- 



138 Famous Actresses. 

lish stage from the chaotic state into which 
it had fallen after the passing of the Kem- 
bles and Macready. 

It was with the keenest delight that one 
witnessed the unfolding of Mr. Pinero's fas- 
cinating play, a light comedy of the most ex- 
traordinary novelty, of simple plot, of unique 
setting, and of masterful character-drawing. 
Indeed, a finer example of the comedy of 
manners and of character the modern stage 
cannot show, and it is not going far amiss to 
rank "Trelawney of the Wells" with those 
masterpieces of comedy, Goldsmith's "She 
Stoops to Conquer" and Sheridan's "The 
School for Scandal." "Trelawney of the 
Wells " was a wonderfully true, as well as 
exceedingly interesting, representation of 
actor life and conditions, not only of forty 
years ago but to a considerable degree of 
to-day. To be sure, there was just a 
touch of burlesque in some of Pinero's 
players, but it was burlesque that was an 









Hilda Spong. 139 

accentuation rather than a caricature. It is 
unquestionably true that the actor himself, 
in a number of his most familiar phases, is 
himself a burlesque from the standpoint of 
the average man of affairs. The actor is 
marvellously apt to take with ponderous seri- 
ousness things which to the ordinary mortal 
are light and fantastic. How faithfully true 
was the self-esteem and vanity of these player- 
folk as pictured by Pinero ! Yet with what 
tenderness the dramatist showed their sim- 
plicity, generosity, and sympathy ! In spite 
of their petty jealousies and their profes- 
sional airs, how lovable they were ! What 
a wealth of humour in Gadd, who could never 
forget that he was the leading man of the 
Bagnigge Wells Theatre ; in Colpoys, low 
comedian among his friends as well as on 
the stage ; in Mr. and Mrs. Telfer, deep-dyed 
in the old declamatory school, whose proudest 
boast was that they had twice acted be- 
fore the queen ; in Avonia Bunn, the senti- 



140 Famous Actresses. 

mentalist, whose forte was boys' parts in 
pantomime; in the whole-souled Imogen 
Parrott ! Humour in all except the pathetic 
Tom Wrench, so far removed from any hint 
of burlesque that he might have stood as 
the central figure of a tragedy. 

The play dealt primarily with the love 
affair of Rose Trelawney, an actress at the 
Bagnigge Wells Theatre, and Arthur Gower, 
a " swell," the grandson of the Vice-Chancel- 
lor, Sir William Gower. Secondarily entered 
into the plot the fortunes of Tom Wrench, a 
poor devil of an actor and a playwright, who 
had theories about naturalness on the stage, 
who also loved Rose, and in whom no one 
believed. The first act pictured the farewell 
dinner of the actors of the Bagnigge Wells 
Theatre to Rose, who was about to spend a 
period of probation with her betrothed's fam- 
ily. The second act showed Rose's boredom 
in the constrained life of Cavendish Square, 
her inability to adapt herself to her new envi- 



Hilda Spong. 141 

ronment, the comical visit of her actor friends 
after their drenching in a sudden shower, and 
at last the rebellion of Rose against the 
petty conventionality and her return to the 
theatre. The third act struck a deeper note, 
and in it Mr. Pinero succeeded in bringing 
out the sad side of the actor's life with 
wonderful truth. There was the failure of 
Rose, whose heart had been expanded by 
love, and whose views of life had been 
changed by her new experiences, in her 
efforts to play with her former success the 
artificial heroines of the old dramas ; and 
there was the mighty joy of Tom Wrench, 
who caught a glimpse of heaven when the 
opportunity came to have his comedy pro- 
duced. There was pathos even in Ferdinand 
Gadd, "a serious actor," as he called him- 
self, forced to accept the part of the Demon 
of Discontent in a Boxing-day pantomime. 
The last act depicted the first rehearsal of 
Wrench's play, showed the bringing together 



142 Famous Actresses. 

of Arthur Gower, now an actor, and Rose, 
and the reconciliation of the two with Sir 
William. 

To sum up briefly the effect of the com- 
edy : The first act was the most interesting ; 
the second act was the funniest, indeed, al- 
most farcical at times, though there was an 
underlying strain of seriousness which at the 
end became predominant; the third act, as 
already stated, was the most serious, and the 
last act was the most original, the most 
subtle as regards motive, and, in spite of 
these virtues, the least effective theatrically. 
The play was developed with remarkable 
ease, and the dialogue, as was to be expected 
from Pinero, was of the finest quality. The 
curtains of the third and last acts were 
H erne-like in their simplicity, that of the 
third act falling as Wrench was about to 
read his play, and the drama ending with 
the simple and suggestive speech by Wrench, 
"Now let the rehearsal proceed." 



Hilda Spong. 143 

Hilda Spong's Imogen Parrott was a bus- 
tling, nonchalant sort of person, fair of face 
and free of manner, good-natured, kind- 
hearted, and with a growing fondness for 
Tom Wrench. Miss Spong had the part, 
which, however, gave not a hint of her pos- 
sible versatility, at her finger tips, as it were. 

As Mrs. Bulmer in R. C. Carton's " Wheels 
within WTieels," Miss Spong displayed a 
sense of humour so perfect that one longed 
then and there for a chance to test the ac- 
tress's resource in expressing genuine emotion 
in the same character. The opportunity was 
not granted, however, there being only a trifle 
of sentimentality at the very end of the play, 
which counted for little. Yet Mrs. Bulmer 
was a woman capable of deep feeling, and it 
was a pity that Mr. Carton did not reveal her 
human, as well as her humourous side. For- 
tunately for the dramatist, "Wheels within 
Wheels " was a farce, and therefore not to be 
held accountable for its vagrancies. It is not 



144 Famous Actresses. 

necessary to dwell on its impossible plot nor 
its curiously inexplicable characters, though, 
if " Wheels within Wheels " had been a com- 
edy, this latter point would have furnished in- 
teresting matter for critical attention. The 
characters were understandable enough by 
themselves, but, after the frivolously-minded 
Lady Curtoys ran away with the seductive 
Egerton Vartrey in a blindly foolish fashion, 
suggestive of Lady Jessica in Henry Arthur 
Jones's "The Liars," their humanity dashed 
down the main staircase and out of the front 
door. 

Mrs. Bulmer's interference with Lady Cur- 
toys' s plans was right enough, even if it were, 
perhaps, borrowed from "Lord and Lady 
Algy," but her method of so doing, which 
somehow or other brought to mind Mrs. 
Trevelyan and "The Degenerates," was out- 
side the bounds of human nature. No woman 
— not even such an altogether good fellow 
as Mrs. Bulmer — would have deliberately 



Hilda Spong. 145 

ruined herself in the eyes of the man she 
loved for the sake of such an unappreciative 
little minx as Lady Curtoys, or for such a 
selfish egotist as Sir Philip Curtoys. Right 
there was the weak point in Mr. Carton's 
play. He sadly misread humanity. A 
woman might go to considerable lengths in 
defying public opinion, but she was not go- 
ing to run the unforgivable risk where the 
man upon whom she had seriously fixed her 
affections was concerned. 

In Mrs. Craigie's "The Ambassador" 
Miss Spong was fortunate in being cast in 
the only character in the comedy that made 
an impression of reality or had truth enough 
to excite sympathetic interest. Consequently 
her Lady Beauvedere easily walked away 
with the honours of this production. It was 
the representation of a noble, whole-souled 
woman stifling her love, even assisting the 
man who had unconsciously won this love, 
into the affections of another. Miss Spong' s 



Famous Actresses. 

acting throughout was noteworthy for its 
quiet suggestiveness, its rich emotional col- 
ouring, and its womanly appeal. 

"The Interrupted Honeymoon," a three- 
act comedy by F. Kinsey Peile, said to have 
been his maiden effort, was originally pro- 
duced at the Avenue Theatre, London, on 
September 23, 1899. It was first acted 
at Daly's Theatre, New York, on March 
20, 1900. It was a mixture of farcical 
comedy and social drama, and not particu- 
larly effective as regards either component. 
The first was the only really good act, and 
the total result of the play was slight, con- 
ventional, and rather impotent. Regarding 
Miss Spong' s work Norman Hapgood wrote : 

" Hilda Spong has the fulcrum part — the 
married lady who (so naughty, familiar, and, 
of course, frank and engaging) smokes those 
cigarettes (off, thank fortune !) and impetu- 
ously compromises herself. Miss Spong 
again showed herself an actress of sure abil- 



Hilda Spong. 147 

ity. In some of the flippant parts her gaiety 
was not very easy nor natural, but all the real 
situations she acted with satisfying adequacy 
and finish. Her method is a good one, not too 
much in vogue. She never tries to suggest 
things by elongated pauses, as is the fashion. 
She does not under-express. Hers is expres- 
sion, not suppression, and it is a relief." 

The New York season of 1 900-1 901 of 
Daniel Frohman's Company began at Daly's 
Theatre on November 26, 1900, with the 
production of "The Man of Forty," by 
Walter Firth. This proved practically a 
failure, and Miss Spong' s part in the comedy 
was conventional, and of no great account. 
"The Man of Forty" was succeeded by R. 
C. Carton's "Lady Huntworth's Experi- 
ment," which proved successful. Miss 
Spong' s part in this play was prominent, 
and later, when the company went on the 
road, she was featured almost as a star. 
" Lady Huntworth's Experiment " was novel 



148 Famous Actresses. 

in theme, and superficially satirical in the 
treatment of that theme. Lady Huntworth 
had just submitted to being divorced by her 
drunken and dissolute husband, preferring 
to be under the ban of society rather than 
under the domination of such a legal lord. 
She sought refuge in the kitchen of the Rev. 
Audley Pillenger, passing herself off as a 
cook, and reducing to immediate and sub- 
servient submission every man about the 
place, from the vicar himself down to the 
butler. This state of affairs resulted in a 
merry game of hide-and-seek, which ended 
when Lady Huntworth made her adieu to 
the startled vicar in her right person, and 
left for London gorgeously arrayed in an 
elaborate gown. The part did not demand 
from Miss Spong anything except gentility, 
personal charm, and farcical cleverness. She 
had no heights nor depths of feeling to en- 
compass, but her light comedy was always 
delicious, and her womanliness distinct. 



CHAPTER X. 

ANNIE RUSSELL IN LIGHT COMEDY. 

I have in mind an ideal play for Annie 
Russell, a play not yet written, still un- 
formed and unthemed, a great drama of 
modern life, comedy of course, but comedy 
that treats seriously of humanity and of 
human conditions. It is not a drama of vio- 
lent action nor of strained conditions, but a 
drama of tremendous depth and vitality, 
a drama of conviction, and a drama of pur- 
pose. Such a play would demand all that 
an imaginative and sympathetic artist could 
give. It would be worthy of Annie Russell, 
and Annie Russell would be worthy of it. 

However, Miss Russell is by no means all 
sentiment and emotion. She has humour as 
well, and this humour, delicate and delicious, 
149 



150 Famous Actresses. 

found expression most gracefully in Jerome 
K. Jerome's fantastic light comedy, "Miss 
Hobbs," and in R. Marshall's still more fantas- 
tic satire, " A Royal Family." " Miss Hobbs," 
although by an English author, was originally 
produced at the Lyceum Theatre, New York, 
on September 7, 1899, with Miss Russell 
in the name part. The play was not seen in 
London till December 1 8th. " Miss Hobbs " 
was a rarely delightful entertainment, for 
Miss Hobbs dwelt in a fancy-land of senti-, 
ment, where men and women, although they 
did have their little faults of temper and their 
little peculiar quirks of disposition, were, 
nevertheless, true and honest, without hyp- 
ocrisy or serious blemish ; a fancy-land in 
which love, pure and idealistic, was the su- 
preme ruler ; where there was no real trouble 
because there was nothing ignoble ; where 
the men were all brave and tender, and the 
women all beautiful and good. 

Unfortunately, Mr. Jerome made this thor- 




ANNIE RUSSELL 
As Miss Hobbs in " Miss Hobbs." 



Annie Russell in Light Comedy. 151 

oughly desirable locality somewhere near 
New York City, which definiteness, without 
adding anything to his drama in the way of 
atmosphere or colour, robbed it of a certain 
imaginative force that could have been re- 
tained just as well as not. Mr. Jerome 
spoke of Delmonico's and he made refer- 
ences to Yale, both of which were not only 
unnecessary, but distinctly shocking and 
disillusionising to one who had become com- 
pletely ensnared by the charming "make- 
believe" that was passing on the stage. 
Sometime playwrights will learn that fixed 
and materialistic locale, when it does not 
further the dramatic action, is more con- 
vincing when absent than when present. 
The imagination works all the better for not 
being pinned down to a street and number, 
when the street and number are of absolutely 
no importance. 

Except for this rather minor detail, how- 
ever, faultfinding with " Miss Hobbs " must 



152 Famous Actresses. 

practically cease. Mr. Jerome's play was 
light comedy of the finest quality, — light 
comedy that coquetted blithely with farce, 
even stepping quickly over the line here and 
there, but as quickly stepping back again. 
If " Miss Hobbs " had been a trifle ruder in 
its fun, — perhaps if it had been acted with a 
bit less of style and finesse, — it would have 
been farce throughout. As it was given by 
Annie Russell and her associates, however, 
the comedy element was more potent than 
the farcical element. Indeed, it seemed to 
me that " Miss Hobbs " was really a difficult 
play to act up to. Its very uncertainty made 
it so. To be at its best, it required in all its 
characters the delicate, the subtle, and the 
suggestive touch of the high-grade comedy 
actor. Mr. Jerome's personages were neither 
types nor caricatures. They came amazingly 
near being human beings. Nor was his wit 
of the sledge-hammer variety. It demanded 
some keenness of perception to grasp it com- 



Annie Russell in Light Comedy. 153 

pletely. In other words, Mr. Jerome did not 
deal extensively in made-to-order epigrams. 
His lines had dramatic value in that they 
fitted, not only the situations, but the char- 
acters as well. Indeed, it needed both the 
situations and the characters to give the lines 
point and full value. This was, of course, 
the most artistic kind of dialogue, for it was 
dialogue that lent its important aid to char- 
acter exposition. Mr. Jerome's construction 
was excellent throughout. His play started 
at once without any preliminary warming up. 
While many of his situations were ingenious, 
not one of them — with the possible excep- 
tion of the yacht scene — had the taint of 
mechanism pure and simple. Moreover, the 
action kept going right up to the fall of the 
final curtain, realising at the very end a 
situation that was of itself a very gem of 
unexpected and beaming comedy. 

Although "Miss Hobbs " seemed to me- 
ander along its happy way without the least 



154 Famous Actresses. 

effort on the part of any one in particular, it 
was true, I think, that to prevent it from 
being well-nigh a complete failure on the 
stage, the comedy required exceptionally fine 
acting in all its important characters. I can 
not imagine a passably good performance of 
the piece. Merely ordinary playing could 
result only in failure. There was nothing 
theatric about the comedy. It had no cli- 
maxes that practically played themselves, no 
great scenes in which the dramatic conflict 
was strongly indicated, no broad strokes of 
surface character-drawing, such as delight 
the conventional actor. The ordinary player 
would have 1 found " Miss Hobbs " wofully 
lacking in strength and incisiveness. He 
would have seen nothing, either in action or 
in character, on which he could have fastened 
with surety. Unable to grasp the complex- 
ity inherent in the very naturalness of Mr. 
Jerome's personages, he would have been 
confounded by their apparent simplicity. 



Annie Russell in Light Comedy. 155 

" Miss Hobbs " offered splendid opportu- 
nities for character exposition only to the 
player who could create, and who had, be^ 
yond the dramatic instinct which is the sole 
equipment of so many actors, a broad and 
sympathetic understanding of mankind as it 
really is, not as stage tradition says that it 
should be. Such a creation must be built up 
step by step, and at the expense of mental 
effort that comprehends something more than 
the mere mastery of the lines. The imagina- 
tion must be called upon to picture what 
manner of man is here embodied, and the 
ingenuity must be taxed to invent ways and 
means by which the individual thus conjured 
up can be most understandingly brought be- 
fore the spectator across the footlights. That 
the playwright is wise to place so heavy a 
burden on his actors is doubtful. It seems 
to me an unwarranted shirking of responsi- 
bility to demand that the players join with 
him in the trials of authorship. Moreover, 



156 Famous Actresses. 

he endangers seriously the success of his 
play, even if he be fortunate enough, as Mr. 
Jerome was in the case of " Miss Hobbs," to 
secure the cooperation of actors whose intelli- 
gence and artistic attainments permit them 
to share in the partnership of character-draw- 
ing. Even they cannot reach the full breadth 
of their powers at once. They must have time 
to perfect and to elaborate. To show that 
this was the process by which " Miss Hobbs," 
as it was acted later in the season, came into 
being, let me quote from Norman Hapgood's 
review of the first presentation of the play in 
New York : 

" The play is so badly constructed that in 
spite of its lightness it drags not infrequently. 
There is not enough 'business,' not enough 
points of the emphatic, dramatic kind. Even 
the good acting could not conceal that. Prob- 
ably more business will be supplied later. As 
it is now, there are painful pauses between 
speeches and between the few details in- 






Annie Russell in Light Comedy. 157 

tended to supply theatrical exigencies. It 
contains no characters and no ideas, but 
nimbly plays with both." 

However true that may have been of the 
first performance, — and I have no doubt that 
it was strictly true at the time it was written, 
— it was certainly not true of " Miss Hobbs " 
when I saw it. Good acting — or, better 
still, wholly adequate acting — did conceal 
what Mr. Hapgood called bad construction. 
The drag had disappeared because the play- 
ers had learned by experience how best to 
emphasise, by both delivery and accompany- 
ing action, the points in Mr. Jerome's dia- 
logue. There were plenty of points, though 
few were penned for persons with skulls eight 
inches thick. Mr. Hapgood's statement that 
" Miss Hobbs " contained no characters, 
showed an odd lack of appreciation of pos- 
sibilities, for which the undeveloped acting 
was again to blame. " Miss Hobbs " was, 
more than anything else, a comedy of charac- 



158 Famous Actresses. 

ter. To be sure, its personages were not 
bundles of exaggerations and eccentricities ; 
they approached life so closely that they 
could not be satisfactorily labelled. 

The great dramatic character, to my mind, 
is not the one most easily understood, not 
the one that can be summed up in a breath, 
not the one that is instinctively classified. 
The great dramatic character is complex, 
mystifying, and, under certain circumstances, 
even illogical ; neither wholly good nor wholly 
bad ; a creation of subtle motive, of varied 
impulse and of conflicting emotion. Such a 
character is an intellectual stimulus. It has 
to be studied, turned this way and that, 
viewed from all sides and under diversified 
conditions. The dramatist provides the 
means of exhibition ; the actor is the exhib- 
itor. He personifies the dramatist's concep- 
tion ; he interprets and explains ; but, more 
than all, he makes the figure of the imagina- 
tion a living reality. That was what Annie 



Annie Russell in Light Comedy. 159 

Russell, Mrs. Gilbert, Charles Richman, and 
Clara Bloodgood did with their characters in 
" Miss Hobbs." 

It was, indeed, a great pleasure to see Miss 
Russell in a light comedy part. I was by no 
means surprised at her command of this diffi- 
cult variety of acting. Her art is rich and 
full, combining, in just the right proportions, 
force and intensity with convincing sincerity, 
a profusion of womanly sentiment with a 
quaint and provoking humour that is entirely 
her own, a rare command of pathos with the 
rarer gift of compelling smiles with the tears. 
In "Miss Hobbs" the bright side of Miss 
Russell's art was seen at its best, though the 
part did not begin to reach the bed-rock of 
her resources. Miss Russell's study of Miss 
Hobbs showed a very feminine woman, 
whom one knew was born to love and to be 
loved, yet who professed to believe that her 
mission here below was to rescue womankind 
from brute man. This perverted state of 



160 Famous Actresses. 

mind was the result of early circumstances 
combined with inexperience, neither of which 
provided the slightest defence against the 
vigorous, if somewhat original and uncon- 
ventional, wooing of Wolff Kingsearl. The 
saving grace of this — to say the least — 
very unusual personage was, according to 
Miss Russell, a delicious sense of humour, 
which, in spite of Miss Hobbs's pose of stern- 
ness, would creep into the corners of her 
mouth and shine tantalisingly in her eyes. 
This single quality made Miss Hobbs very 
real and very fascinating. One got to like 
her so much that he was susceptible, because 
he could comprehend her point of view, to 
the very slight undercurrent of pathos in the 
last act. 

"A Royal Family," Captain R. Marshall's 
three-act comedy, was originally presented in 
the Court Street Theatre, London, on Octo- 
ber the 14th, 1899. Annie Russell first 
appeared in the play in the Lyceum Theatre, 






Annie Russell in Light Comedy. 161 

New York City, on September 5, 1900. 
" A Royal Family ,,? had enough originality — 
not in theme, for that was old, but in treat- 
ment — to make it worth investigating. Cap- 
tain Marshall described his work as a comedy 
of romance, but a comedy of satire and senti- 
ment would have been a more correct sum- 
ming "up of this delightful product of a 
whimsical imagination. 

There was an unmistakable suggestion of 
W. S. Gilbert in the satire of the comedy, 
the same topsy-turviness that was charac- 
teristic of the author of "Pinafore." Cap- 
tain Marshall's shaft was aimed at royalty, 
and with the most punctilious care he pre- 
sented their Highnesses in the midst of all 
their spectacular trappings, but robbed of the 
awesome demi-godism so essential to their 
dignity. He showed that, though they 
posed skilfully enough in public, they were 
but ordinary men and women after all, and 
he made them supremely ridiculous by insist- 



1 62 Famous Actresses. 

ing that they were as petty and as common- 
place as the rest of mankind. 

Shakespeare once remarked, " Uneasy lies 
the head that wears a crown." Of course, 
every one recognises the truth of this saying, 
but still he thinks within himself that he 
would like nothing better than to take a 
chance at being uneasy. He pictures this 
uneasiness to himself as heroically grand. 
He fancies that the king's sleepless nights 
are due to worrying about the welfare of the 
people, that his weary days result from unre- 
mittent labours in ameliorating the conditions 
of the poor. The kingly head may be un- 
easy, he thinks, but the heart within the 
kingly body must, as a recompense, glow 
continually with satisfaction and pride over 
great opportunities nobly utilised. 

Captain Marshall also believed that "un- 
easy lies the head that wears a crown," but 
the cause of this uneasiness, according to 
his idea, was neither inspiring nor entranc- 



Annie Russell in Light Comedy. 163 

ing. In fact, he regarded the job of king 
with contemptuous amusement. His decla- 
ration was that kingly uneasiness resulted 
from plain, ordinary, plebeian boredom, — utter 
weariness due to a continual effort to live 
up to the popular notion of what a king ought 
to be. According to Captain Marshall, — and 
after listening to his argument, one was in- 
clined to agree with him, — a king is that 
most wretched of human beings, an abject 
slave to rule and order, to etiquette and con- 
ventionality. So far from being able to do 
what he likes, or to enjoy himself as he 
pleases, his day is parcelled out for him 
in a most exasperating fashion — never a 
minute for private contemplation of his 
own greatness, always on exhibition, always 
pretending to be something that he is not, 
making believe that he feels something 
that he feels not, acting as if he were high 
and mighty, when in reality he has a kindly 
heart, a simple nature, and a troublesome 



164 Famous Actresses. 

appreciation of the ridiculousness of his 
pose. 

Hopelessly lonely, too, is a king. As Louis 
of Arcadia plaintively remarked to his good 
friend the Cardinal, there are only about ten 
monarchs in Europe that amount to anything ; 
and royal calls, the Dowager Queen shrewdly 
pointed out, cannot be frequently indulged 
in, on account of the appalling expenses that 
accompany them. Finally, what of the ruler 
of a people who could not coax nor compel 
obedience from his own children ? The 
diminutive Prince Charles was manifestly not 
in the least in terror of his royal papa, while 
the Princess Angela, a fetching combination 
of modern independence and fifteenth century 
romance, refused positively to obey the royal 
commands, thus causing evident embarrass- 
ment in her father, who, for a king whose 
specialty should have been stern, unrelenting 
authority, was absurdly fond of her. No one 
was likely to cherish unchristianlike envy of 



Annie Russell in Light Comedy. 165 

Captain Marshall's king. Indeed, had not 
the gentleman been so good-natured and so 
humourou sly a. ware of the anomaly of his own 
position, his portentous helplessness might 
well have been a reason for tears, instead of 
a cause 'for laughter. The king himself, to 
be sure, was philosophically resigned. He 
could not help being a king, unfortunate as 
that fate was, and he was sportsman enough 
to make the best of an unpleasant circum- 
stance. Plainly King Louis would have been 
the best of good fellows, if he had not been 
compelled to reign. He was naturally gener- 
ous and tactfully considerate, but, being a 
king, he had to stifle these excellent qualities. 
He was obliged to make himself obnoxious 
to those about him because his position de- 
manded that he continually keep his " front " 
in view. This necessity bored him tremen- 
dously, and it also bored every one that came 
near him. 

But Louis's lot was almost a happy one 



1 66 Famous Actresses. 

when it was compared with that of the un- 
fortunate queen dowager. Nothing satisfied 
her. The four horses — she would have been 
highly insulted if there had not been at least 
four — that dragged the vehicle bearing her 
august person to the royal wedding were, in 
her own words, "mere animals." Common 
princesses and doubtful duchesses passed her 
on the way, and when she reached the church 
she was inconsiderately shoved into a pew 
marked "For distinguished strangers." More- 
over, the trumpeters, who announced her at 
court functions, never made noise enough to 
please her. Her edifying reminiscences of 
the king's youth were never listened to, her 
advice was not heeded, and when there was 
any managing to do, she, who dearly loved 
to manage, was not permitted the slight 
happiness of making suggestions. 

Verily an afflicted royal family, for even 
the diminutive Prince Charles, whose length 
of life had not exceeded five years, was con- 



Annie Rtcssell in Light Comedy. 167 

stantly in trouble. He never could do what 
he wanted to do, and he never wanted to do 
what he had to do. He was forced to eat 
bread and butter when he preferred pink- 
frosted cake, and in spite of his numerous 
attendants he arrived at a solemn ceremonial 
without his pocket handkerchief, and was 
obliged to send a dignified courtier after it. 

War threatened this fanciful kingdom of 
Arcadia at the opening of the play, but war 
was impossible, though the enthusiastic peo- 
ple clamoured for it loudly and persistently. 
The army could not fight, for it had not 
mastered the new drill regulations. More- 
over, its guns were ineffective, and there 
was no money to replace them, the funds 
having been spent on some newfangled 
electrical cannon, which refused to shoot as 
they were expected to. War could be pre- 
vented only by marrying the Princess Angela 
to Victor, the crown prince of the hated 
enemy. Princess Angela, however, had been 



1 68 Famous Actresses. 

reading "Romeo and Juliet," and objected 
seriously to being thus diplomatically sacri- 
ficed. She was a charming girl, this prin- 
cess, only nineteen years old, and one did not 
blame her a bit for her lack of patriotism. 
She had never seen the crown prince, of 
course, but still, her kingly father's argu- 
ment, that this circumstance should have 
made her wholly unprejudiced in the matter 
of marrying him, was not thoroughly sound. 

Naturally, in the kingdom of Arcadia there 
was a cardinal, — a wily, wise, and altogether 
delightful old fellow, — and naturally, too, he 
undertook to steer the unsophisticated and 
obstinate princess safely into the desired 
matrimonial port. He did it, too, though a 
Chief of Police, who detected crime by method, 
— first suspicion, then investigation, and fi- 
nally action, — seemed determined to blunder 
the Cardinal's plans into nought. Incognito 
as a humble count, and in a romantic wood^ 
land setting thoughtfully provided by the 



Annie Russell in Light Comedy. 169 

Cardinal, the prince wooed and won his prin- 
cess. Moreover, he succeeded in arriving 
safely at his betrothal although he was once 
arrested by the aforesaid Chief of Police for 
abducting himself. 

It will be readily perceived that the love 
story, which was the pivot around which 
" A Royal Family " revolved, was warranted 
strictly sentimental, but Captain Marshall es- 
caped the charge of mawkishness, by refusing 
to be serious. He was not ashamed of his 
romancing, and his imagination was vivid 
enough, his idealism sincere enough, and 
his sentiment honest enough, to make one 
willing to spurn for a time the dull earth, 
and enjoy with him poetised love. He 
cloaked his fancy with genuine humour, and 
thus prevented it from being ridiculous. The 
balance of sound sense was constantly main- 
tained by the keenness of the dramatist's 
satire, and the incisiveness of his wit. " A 
Royal Family " was crowded with lines that 



170 Famous Actresses, 

bit. They were rarely epigrams neatly 
turned, but they were of a more insinuating 
nature, the subtle pinning of some sham or 
foible. Often these were merely suggestions, 
and always they required at least a modi- 
cum of intelligent thought in order to be 
appreciated. 

In its workmanship Captain Marshall's 
play was equally admirable. The light 
touch was ever manifest — no hurry, no 
boisterousness, no vulgarity. Novel situa- 
tions were abundant, and they were not 
forced upon one, either, as stage exigencies. 
The tree scene of the second act was a mine 
of comedy, not only as a situation, but as a 
means for character-juggling as well. The 
interest in the action was stimulated and held 
to the very end, and the final stroke in the 
betrothal scene was a masterpiece of senti- 
ment that left one smiling, happy, and 
thoroughly satisfied. There was a single 
weakness in the play, which could be ac- 



Annie Russell in Light Comedy, iji 

counted for only on the supposition that 
Captain Marshall expected to do one thing, 
and drifted into doing another. This weak- 
ness centred in the extraneous matter that 
had to do with that mysterious and purpose- 
less body known as the Arcadian Patriots. 
There was nothing in any of this of the least 
dramatic value, and the little point of the 
suspicions of the Chief of Police, regarding 
the disguised Prince Victor's imaginary rela- 
tions with the band, could readily have been 
arranged by some expedient less elaborate. 
Father Anselm's love for Angela was prob- 
ably introduced with the idea that a strong 
dramatic situation could be developed by con- 
trasting this pure, unselfish affection, with 
the priest's accidental connection with the 
Patriots. Whatever the dramatist had in 
mind, nothing came of it, and either he for- 
got to cut away this useless timber, or else 
he -was so enamoured of Father Anselm's 
devotion to Angela,, that he had not the 



172 Famous Actresses. 

moral courage to sacrifice him on the altar 
of artistic consistency. 

All satire must have a substantial basis of 
truth to be effective. Satire does not consist 
in lying, but, to quote the diplomatic Duke 
of Barascon in " A Royal Family," in pictur- 
esquely adapting the truth. Satire may 
be caustic, or it may be simply humourous. 
If caustic, the element of denunciation 
is strongly suggested, if not actually ex- 
pressed. If poking fun be the only end in 
view, the satire will be devoid of partisan- 
ship. It will be ridiculous without being es- 
sentially cruel. The person satirised is likely 
enough to squirm, unless he have the thick- 
est of skins, but his squirming is expected 
as a part of the game. The most common 
methods of satire are exaggeration and in- 
congruity. The latter was Captain Mar- 
shall's chief weapon of offence. There is 
nothing more necessary to royalty than per- 
sonal dignity and consistent aloofness. A 



Amiie Russell in Light Comedy. 173 

king eating terrapin from a gold dish is an 
inspiring spectacle, but a king devouring 
corned beef and cabbage from table d'hote 
crockery, is an object for unreverential mirth. 
" A Royal Family " displayed a king wres- 
tling with corned beef and cabbage. 

However, " A Royal Family " was not all 
satire. Indeed, satire was merely the delect- 
able seasoning of an exceedingly nai've quality 
of romantic sentiment, sentiment as innocent 
of worldliness as the fairy tale of Cinderella 
and the Prince. It was a pretty tale, — that 
of the rebellious princess, who, refusing to 
wed without love, learned to love the man 
she must wed, — but it was a pretty tale 
simply and solely because it was prettily 
told. It was the manner that won, not the 
story itself. Therefore Captain Marshall was 
doubly and triply fortunate in having his 
sweet, but somewhat colourless, heroine 
clothed with the personality of Annie Rus- 
sell. I suspect that it was not altogether an 



174 Famous Actresses. 

easy task to imbue this dream child of roy- 
alty with winsomeness that at the same time 
was untainted with familiarity, with wilful- 
ness that was without obstinacy, with fresh 
girlishness that had not a hint of repellent 
forwardness. Purity and innocence were the 
fundamentals of the character. Purity and 
innocence are difficult to present on the stage 
as facts, though one can readily enough be 
coaxed into accepting them as self-imposed 
illusions. 

There was the least hint of affectedness 
and artificiality in Miss Russell's work in the 
first act, that made one feel that even she, 
with her penetrating, though delicate, charm, 
was battling with self-consciousness in her 
effort to make this extraordinary princess 
sympathetically real and humanly genuine. 
The result was that while one found Angela 
lovable, he did not recognise the full power 
of her fascinations until her sentimental and 
unsophisticated views of the world were soft- 



Annie Russell in Light Comedy. 175 

ened by her full, free, and natural enjoyment 
of life, untrammelled and unfettered by un- 
wholesome pettiness and espionage. Then 
one perceived the beautiful honesty of her 
innocence. This second act of "A Royal 
Family " had much of the beauty of the woo- 
ing scenes of Rosalind and Orlando in "As 
You Like It," the sweet humour, suggestive 
roguishness, and girlish frankness of Angela 
being strikingly remindful of Rosalind. 

While Miss Russell's princess was all ten- 
der maidenliness, untarnished by contact with 
the world, and revelling in illusions, she was 
also a girl thoroughly healthy minded and sen- 
sible. She wore her heart on her sleeve, but 
one loved her none the less for that. Beyond 
this I have no especial desire to analyse her 
— probably I could not if I wished to. I 
know that she was altogether charming, and 
just as full of innocent mischievousness as 
she was of unmasked sincerity and truth. 



/ 



CHAPTER XI. 

VALERIE BERGERE. 

Through the medium of an unusually- 
impressive one-act tragedy, and undeniably 
vulgar three-act farce, Valerie Bergere, an 
actress of grace, youth, and beauty, made 
herself known during the season of 1900- 
190 1 to a thoroughly pleased public. Miss 
Bergere had been well trained for the display 
of versatility that the change from tragedy 
to farce demanded, for her work had been 
confined chiefly to stock companies. Succes- 
sive seasons of this irksome routine had given 
her well-rounded technique and admirable 
resource. Probably, until David Belasco 
took her in hand, she lacked neatness and 
finish, for those are qualities that no one can 
176 



Valerie Bergere. 177 

acquire in a stock company that has the 
weekly change of bill habit. However, this 
is only surmise. There was no noticeable 
lack either of neatness or of finish in her pres- 
entations of Cho-Cho San in "Madame But- 
terfly," and of Cora in "Naughty Anthony." 
In "Madame Butterfly," David Belasco, 
genuinely touched probably by the deep 
pathos of the tragedy, Japanese in setting, 
but world-wide in humanness, succeeded 
in putting a story on the stage with scarcely 
any resort to pure theatricalism. This was 
an extraordinary thing for David Belasco, 
whose chief characteristic as a playwright 
has always been his abiding insistence on 
theatrical effect, regardless of every consid- 
eration of logic, human nature, or probability. 
Only once in "Madame Butterfly" did the 
Belasco instinct for mere effect get wholly 
beyond control ; it was when he permitted a 
gleam of light to illumine in unnatural fash- 
ion Cho-Cho San's face as she lay dead. It 



178 Famous Actresses. 

was palpably electric light from an incandes- 
cent hidden somewhere in the gown that the 
actress wore ; and when it blazed forth, illu- 
sion, affronted, quickly departed. Instantly 
Japan vanished ; only the stage of a theatre 
was left. 

Yet there were many things to impress 
one in the staging of this dramatic gem, not 
one of them more original in conception, 
more audacious in execution, or more sure in 
effect, than the dramatic episode of silence 
and suspense, with its delicate hints for the 
stimulation of the imagination, which marked 
the passing of Madame Butterfly's night of 
weary watchfulness for the return of her 
American husband. 

Without affectation, one was enticed into 
living in thought those long, long hours. 
Nightfall coming, found Madame Butterfly, 
with the child and one attendant, beginning 
the vigil. Darkness deepened, and the child 
slept. Lamps were lighted, -shone brightly, 




VALERIE BERGERE 
As Cho-Cho San in " Madame Butterfly. 



Valerie Bergere. 179 

flickered and burned themselves out. The 
servant slept by the side of the child. Still 
motionless at her peep-hole in the screen 
stood little Cho-Cho San, looking, looking, 
waiting, waiting — watching while the night 
hours dragged away, watching amid the 
dawning, shivering at her post in the keen 
morning air, pitiful always in her loneliness. 
And we passed the hours with her, felt all 
their dreary length in ten minutes ! 

Founded on truth, conceived in sincerity, 
and revealed with simplicity, " Madame But- 
terfly," with its commonplace tale of the 
love of a woman, appealed to the universally 
human with rare power and directness. It 
effused kindliness, tenderness, and generosity. 
Sweeping away the barrier of smirking con- 
vention and the pose of self-complacent artifi- 
ciality, it bore down on the heart, and stirred 
richly the sympathies. It caused the tears 
to flow. Words seemed almost superfluous 
for its interpretation, and its influence was 



i8o Famous Actresses. 

felt mightily through acting that was by no 
means idealising. For Cho-Cho San de- 
manded the ingenuous, vivid, and suggestive 
art of a Sada Yacco. 

However, stepping down from the aerial 
plane of idealism to matter-of-fact possibility, 
there was very little to condemn and a great 
deal to praise in Miss Bergere's impersona- 
tion. While she never completely realised 
the atmosphere of the character, — the Japan- 
ese of it, — she never failed to suggest it. If 
she was not actually Japanese, she was at 
least a very close and satisfactory imitation 
of Japanese. As far as the mere expres- 
sion of emotion, — and this is saying much, 
when emotion was so subtle and at the same 
time so far-reaching as it was in " Madame 
Butterfly," — she was always true and always 
sincere. She never failed to strike the right 
note. 

Indeed, so convincing was her Cho-Cho 
San, that her translation into the vivacious 



Valerie Bergere. 181 

light comedy — or, more exactly, farce — of 
" Naughty Anthony " was a shock as well as 
a surprise. Had her personality in this part 
been a whit less winning, or her abandon 
in the least tinged with grossness, she would 
certainly have been wholly lost. For Cora, 
the hosiery model, was far from being an ele- 
vating example of feminine virtue, although, 
for Miss Bergere's sake, one was willing, 
even anxious, to write her down a paragon 
of frolicsome innocence, a harmlessly au- 
dacious young thing, whose safeguard was 
her giddy guiltlessness. Of course, that was 
simply personality getting in its fine work, 
for impersonally, " Naughty Anthony," al- 
though the dialogue contained not a single 
indecent line, was morally indefensible, all 
the worse for being cunningly suggestive 
instead of bluntly bad. 

Valerie Bergere is a California girl, and 
her theatrical career began in the East only 
a comparatively few years ago. Playgoers 



1 82 Famous Actresses. 

of even the shortest memories remember a 
melodrama called " On the Bowery." It was 
the work of Robert N. Stephens, then a 
dramatic writer in Philadelphia, who since 
has taken far higher flights as play- 
wright and novelist. His romantic drama, 
"An Enemy to the King," is equally well 
known in novel form, while his " Philip Win- 
wood " has made him the friend of a wide 
circle of readers. " On the Bowery " was 
designed to exploit the histrionic talents of 
the recently deceased Steve Brodie, who 
once astonished the world by jumping from 
the Brooklyn Bridge into the East River. 

"On the Bowery" started its triumphant 
career in Philadelphia at the beginning of 
the season of 1894, and everywhere drew 
crowded houses of breathless spectators, 
who expected to witness a stage duplication 
of Brodie' s bridge-jumping feat. This sen- 
sational scene, however, proved to be more 
disappointing than exciting, and the audi- 



Valerie Bergere. 183 

ences, therefore, turned to more interesting 
features of the entertainment. One of these 
was Miss Bergere' s impersonation of a tough 
girl, without which no play of the Bowery 
could be complete. 

Miss Bergere filled this sketchy part to 
perfection, and the following season she 
further distinguished herself in a humble 
way in "The White Rat," another play by 
Mr. Stephens, which likewise exploited life 
in the lower sections of New York. In 
1897 Miss Bergere became the leading 
woman of a hard-working stock company 
in Philadelphia, where she remained for two 
seasons, proving herself one of the most 
painstaking, efficient, and popular members 
of the organisation. Success after success 
in the constantly changing bills was credited 
to her, her Carmen and Madame Sans Gene 
being received with especial favour. During 
part of the season of 1 899-1900, she was 
the leading woman of the Dearborn Stock 



x g4 Famous Actresses. 

Company of Chicago, where her Kate Ver- 
non, in " In Mizzoura," is still remembered. 
In the season of 1900-1901, came her 
"Madame Butterfly" and "Naughty An- 
thony" experience. Miss Bergere is the 
wife of John J. Farrell, well known in 
Philadelphia as the leading man of the 
Forepaugh Stock Company. 



CHAPTER XII. 

MARY MANNERING AS A STAR. 

Mary Mannering's suddenly attained 
popularity as a star was one of the sur- 
prising and logically unaccountable features 
of the dramatic season of 1 900-1 901. Its 
exact duplicate I do not remember. 'It is 
true that two seasons ago Viola Allen ar- 
rived at the dignity of established stardom 
with marvellous suddenness, but she had for 
years been a stock actress of acknowledged 
prominence, and, moreover, her play, "The 
Christian," while far from being a wonder 
as a work of art, had enough superficial 
sensationalism, theatrical effectiveness, and 
adroit buncombe to account for its vogue. 
There is, by the way, a striking parallel 
between the professional careers of these 
185 



1 86 Famous Actresses. 

two women. Both gained their first pro- 
nounced recognition as the leading women 
of two representative stock companies, — 
Miss Allen with Charles Frohman's Empire 
Theatre Company, and Miss Mannering with 
Daniel Frohman's Lyceum Theatre Com- 
pany, — and both ventured forth as stars 
in plays dramatised from novels. 

But Mary Mannering' s case was far the 
more remarkable of the two. Viola Allen 
did have a play, though it was a bad one. 
Mary Mannering had only the name of a 
largely circulated novel. Miss Allen also 
had a fairly widespread reputation. Miss 
Mannering — so most of us would have de- 
clared — was practically unknown outside of 
a few of the larger cities. We who did know 
her were willing to grant without argument 
her personal loveliness, her great charm, the 
insinuating sweetness of her veiled voice, and 
the delight of her refined comedy and gentle 
emotionalism. Had we been asked if she 



Mary Mannering as a Star. 187 

were personally or artistically strong enough 
to star, we should unhesitatingly have said 
no. And yet we were confronted with the 
spectacle of Miss Mannering starring, amid 
a shower of coin bestowed by a delighted 
and appreciative public. She was not car- 
ried to success, either, by the dramatic 
strength of a moving play, but she actually 
lugged the vehicle in which she should have 
ridden. I confess that I did not believe that 
her personality was so potent. 

Still, who so unimpressionable that he 
could not feel the feminine allurement of 
Miss Mannering' s Janice Meredith ? Of 
course it was a purely fanciful creation, 
a conception entirely of romantic weaving, 
the idealism of coquetry. Mayhap it is 
fortunate that Janice Merediths of the Man- 
nering type do not live, for they would be a 
constant threat to the accepted social order, 
and no home nor domestic fireside would be 
safe from their innocent plunderings. 



1 88 Famous Actresses. 

Not that Mary Mannering's Janice Mere- 
dith, with all her provoking coquetry, lacked 
emotional stability. In truth, she loved the 
bond servant, Charles Fownes, afterward the 
gallant Colonel Brereton, with unswerving 
devotion through all four acts of the play, 
though this merit was a matter of no great 
moment. Janice's love-affair was only a side 
issue, in spite of the fact that theoretically it 
formed the main theme of the play. Prac- 
tically it was but a single one of Janice 
Meredith's many phases, and it was not as 
interesting one as her plaguing of good- 
natured Philemon, her cat-like sport with 
the unpleasant Lord Clowes, her wholesale 
flirtations with every periwig in sight, her 
cajolery of father and mother, and her 
mischievous treatment of her long-suffering 
scapegoat playmate, the unlucky Tabitha. 

Indeed, this Janice was no woman strug- 
gling valiantly with a serious affair of the 
heart. She was an irresponsible girl with a 




MARY MANNERING 
As Janice Meredith in " Janice Meredith. 



Mary Mannering as a Star. 189 

sweetheart, a strong hankering for romance, 
and an exceedingly active fondness for fun. 
She loved her soldier beau, and she could 
become very serious when she thought that 
he might possibly be killed ; but, as a gen- 
eral thing, she persistently refused to allow 
her imagination to turn that way, and she 
laughed and was continuously happy through 
the devastating war. She was a rebel, and 
she boldly proclaimed the fact ; but her 
politics were scarcely taken seriously even 
by herself. She proposed that the British 
officers toast Washington, but that was mis- 
chievousness rather than bravado. She helped 
her lover to dodge capture, but that was 
largely impulse. Her experience as a pris- 
oner of war was wholly a joke. Again, love 
of fun, pride in her quick - wittedness, and 
general perverseness, rather than love, were 
the motives that made her aid Brereton to 
get information to Washington of the Hes- 
sians' defenceless condition. 



190 Famous Actresses. 

In other words, Janice Meredith, as por- 
trayed by Miss Mannering, was very much of 
a flesh-and-blood young woman, and not at all 
a heroic figure with a leaning toward hip-hip- 
hurrah melodrama. Judging from the quality 
of the play, "Janice Meredith," Edward E. 
Rose, the man who dramatised it, did not 
originate this human conception. Certainly, 
Paul Leicester Ford, the author of the novel, 
did not, for his heroine never showed the 
slightest likeness to a living possibility. I 
am inclined to fix the responsibility on the 
Mary Mannering personality and on the re- 
freshing Mannering temperament. 

As a matter of fact, one stretches a point 
in calling "Janice Meredith" a play. It 
would be more correct to term it a series of 
melodramatic incidents, which, except for the 
continued presence of Janice Meredith, had 
but the slightest relations to each other. 
This character was the rope which bound to- 
gether the four acts. A plot — that is to 



Mary Mannering as a Star. 191 

say, a connected and logically developed story, 
— with a beginning, a middle, and an end — 
"Janice Meredith" had not. Nor was it a 
study of character, nor a picture of Revolu- 
tionary times, nor anything at all, indeed, 
except the setting forth on the stage of cer- 
tain imaginary happenings described in a 
somewhat loosely constructed novel. 

We were first shown Squire Meredith's 
farmyard at Greenwood, New Jersey, — a 
wonderfully pretty setting, — and we met the 
swaggering British officers, the manly Charles 
Fownes, the awkward and bashful Philemon 
Hennion, the rascally Lord Clowes, the imp- 
ish Janice, and the catspaw Tabitha. A series 
of courtships was launched, — Philemon's, 
Lord Clowes's and Charles's, — but they 
were not of much account. The main inter- 
est was in Janice's comedy — her witty verbal 
contests with his Majesty's soldiers, her pes- 
tering of the Cupid-smitten Charles, and her 
complete rout of the bashful but amorous 



192 Famous Actresses. 

Philemon. There was a bit of melodrama in 
Janice's release of Charles from imprisonment 
in the smoke-house, and still more melodrama 
in the climax of the act, the announcement 
of the conflict at Lexington. 

Another charming setting was provided 
for the impossible incidents of the second act, 
the main episode of which was the visit of 
Charles Fownes, now Jack Brereton of Wash- 
ington's army, to the squire's home, at that 
time guarded by British soldiers and occupied 
by British officers, and Brereton's sensational 
escape with the connivance of Janice. The 
climax of this act was the toast to Washing- 
ton. In the third act, which passed at Colonel 
Rahl's headquarters at Trenton, Brereton for 
the first time displayed his predilection for 
covering his face with a handkerchief. Here 
we had more pretty Janice Meredith comedy, 
— the young woman, at this time, being a 
prisoner for aiding a rebel to escape, — and 
samples of wild swashing melodrama, the 






Mary Mannering as a Star. 193 

act ending with a pictorial climax, the 
capture of Colonel Rahl's headquarters by 
Washington's troops. The fourth act jumped 
to the surrender of Yorktown. It was the 
least interesting one of the play, and dragged 
wretchedly through the whole of the pro- 
tracted love scene between Janice and Brere- 
ton. 

Edward E. Rose has had a long training 
as a stage-manager. He was engaged in 
this important branch of theatricals for a 
lengthy period in Boston. He served the 
Frohman brothers faithfully for many years. 
The best that could be done for " Janice 
Meredith" was to regard it as a natural 
product from an expert stage-manager. 
From the standpoint of the mechanic and 
the man who knows about centres and left 
centres, right upper entrances and back 
drops, the play acted well. I cannot recall 
a single line in the piece, but I remember 
that the comedy business was, as a general 



194 Famous Actresses. 

thing, very good. No character, with the 
exception of Janice, made the least impres- 
sion of reality, but I know that the action 
was rapid and continuous, and the melo- 
drama, while wholly theatrical and reeking 
with familiar stage tricks, had dash enough 
to make it effective. I readily perceived that 
there was no semblance of logical dramatic 
development anywhere, that the climaxes 
were picked up bodily and thrown in. Yet 
it was apparent that the actors had been 
splendidly trained to get the greatest possi- 
ble effect from these situations, to play them 
with a deceptive likeness to spontaneity. 

The two bright spots in "Janice Mere- 
dith " were Mary Mannering and the scenery. 
For the pleasure they gave me I was duly 
grateful. No sets could have been quainter 
or more seductively homelike than the types 
of colonial rooms shown in acts two and 
three. 

Miss Mannering's last appearances with 






Mary Mannering as a Star. 195 

Daniel Frohman's Lyceum Theatre Company 
occurred during the season of 1899- 1900, 
when she acted the altogether bewitching 
Jane Nangle in Henry Arthur Jones's enter- 
taining, but otherwise ordinary comedy, "The 
Manoeuvres of Jane." It approaches a mis- 
demeanour to call this play a comedy ; it was 
in reality a four-act farce — farce almost the 
only positive merit of which was a first act 
of unusual novelty and decided ingeniousness. 
Mr. Frohman's players helped out Mr. Jones 
wonderfully by acting the farce as if it were 
comedy. They turned a number of sketchy 
and conventional types of character into indi- 
viduals, several of them genuinely human, and 
all of them of theatrical effectiveness. By 
constantly keeping the action up to concert 
pitch they succeeded remarkably well in con- 
cealing the spots in the last two acts where 
Mr. Jones's inventive faculty hesitated, and 
by their illuminative interpretation of certain 
unprepared-for situations, they nullified to a 



196 Famous Actresses. 

considerable extent the blemish of Mr. Jones's 
dubious construction. 

Probably the dramatist intended to write a 
satirical comedy, and the first act was not 
without its pretensions in the comedy line. 
But in this one act Mr. Jones used up all his 
heavy ammunition. He introduced in quick 
succession a fascinating array of characters, 
and the development of the action was full 
of surprises, and comparatively free from 
explanations. The humour was the natural 
product of plot and characters. Mr. Jones, 
however, by exploiting a straight situation and 
pairing off his four lovers, once and for all 
settled the main complications of his story. 
There was really no dramatic development 
left for the rest of the play, though amusing 
incidents were furnished in plenty. The 
comedy became farce, and the combinations 
that ensued were superficial and artificial. 
It is never so interesting to watch something 
come out just as you knew all along it was 



Mary Mannering as a Star. 197 

bound to come out, as it is to see an 
action expand and broaden from small and 
insignificant beginnings until it has attained 
a growth that, upon reviewing the steps 
by which it was attained, one perceives is 
perfectly logical, but which, with only the 
first conditions in mind, one would never have 
dreamed were possible. Mr. Jones's play 
simply brought about the expected. One 
knew that the sly and scheming Constantia 
would somehow or other worm a proposal of 
marriage from the self-satisfied and easily 
worked Lord Bapchild. One knew that the 
pretty and wilful and sharp-tempered Jane 
would surely bring her peppery father to 
terms and finally marry young Langdon, the 
man of her choice. 

Artistically acted as it was, the play 
acquired an importance beyond its actual 
worth as drama. The players, without in 
the least toning down the vigour necessary 
to farce, maintained throughout a distinction 



198 Famous Actresses. 

of style and definiteness of characterisation 
worthy of the best comedy. The result was 
that Mr. Jones's exaggerations and inconsist- 
encies, the blank places in his action, and his 
feeble construction, were made remarkably 
harmless. In fact, at times only a little self- 
deception was required to make one believe 
that Mr. Jones's play really had some author- 
ity as a work of dramatic art. This aspect 
of "The Manoeuvres of Jane " was strikingly 
like the impression one received from Clyde 
Fitch's "Barbara Frietchie." Daniel Froh- 
man's company succeeded in turning farce 
into a close imitation of high-class comedy, 
while Julia Marlowe and her company suc- 
ceeded in changing obvious melodrama into 
a fair resemblance of tragedy. So much for 
the dramatist's debt to the actor. Usually 
the balance is on the other side, — it is the 
actor who is the debtor. A strong play has 
carried many a poor actor into public ap- 
proval, but the instances where the actor has 



Mary Mannering as a Star. 199 

been powerful enough to make an ordinary 
play seem extraordinary are not so common. 
In " The Manoeuvres of Jane " Miss Man- 
nering was beautiful to look upon, and her 
personality was appealingly feminine. She 
was simple, and she was sincere. Her light 
comedy style was perfect. Her part, how- 
ever, called for something more than light 
comedy. There was a strain of serious emo- 
tion in the character, which was also finely 
indicated by the actress. Jane was a delight- 
ful young woman only when she chose to be. 
At other times, she was fiery, obstinate, and 
mighty disagreeable. Miss Jane introduced 
herself to one's notice by passionately defy- 
ing everybody, but became suddenly trans- 
formed into the most lovable creature 
imaginable when she discovered that the 
young man, whom her father had declared 
that she should never under any cir- 
cumstances marry, was a member of the 
household that she had been so bitterly 



200 Famous Actresses 

denouncing. Finally she plotted an elope- 
ment, but the plan miscarried. To soothe 
her disappointment she quarrelled in furious 
fashion with her lover, then repented and 
made up in her prettiest manner. 

From this outline it will be seen that Jane 
demanded from the actress more than the 
average variety of expression. Miss Man- 
nering capitally realised the part in all its 
phases, and there was one touch in her char- 
acterisation that was especially good — the 
spirit of mischief and the sportive merri- 
ment that ever seemed to peer around the 
corners of her mouth and peek from her eyes 
even during the most vixenish of her displays 
of temper. It was this frivolous glint that 
saved Jane's reputation. One could not take 
her too seriously. She seemed a wilful child 
who needed mild discipline, rather than a 
young woman rebelling against necessary 
and rightful restraint. 




MRS. LESLIE CARTER. 



CHAPTER XIII. 

" ZAZA " AND MRS. LESLIE CARTER. 

Before attempting a review of Mrs. Les- 
lie Carter's Zaza, it is well to note that 
few of the Jmany who have seen her in 
this part have really seen the same Zaza. 
There was from the very beginning an ex- 
citing spirit of gamble about Mrs. Carter's 
impersonation. One paid his money at the 
door, not knowing exactly what was coming 
to him in return for it. He might be fa- 
voured with a wholly absorbing exhibition of 
hysterical theatrics ; he might get merely a 
mildly interesting specimen of mechanical 
acting. I saw "Zaza" from beginning to 
end three times, I believe, and once out of 
these three times Mrs. Carter's work was 
partially worthy of the extraordinary praise 



202 Famous Actresses. 

that was accorded it by some reviewers. 
The other two times her performance was 
perfunctory and disillusionising. I suppose 
that these recurring lapses from the ideal 
were due to " temperament." Mrs. Carter's 
force in " Zaza " came from a state of semi- 
hysteria. When she could not throw herself 
into this condition, she failed to make an im- 
pression. Of course, the longer she played 
the part, the less easy she found it to give 
herself up completely to its influence. 

The first time I saw her as Zaza, she was 
not in the spirit of the part, and she was not 
in the least convincing. Even the mechanics 
were not all there, and she merely skimmed 
the surface of the character. I had a similar 
experience with Richard Mansfield's " Cyrano 
de Bergerac," just before that actor was 
compelled temporarily to abandon his tour 
because of illness. Six months after, I saw 
Mansfield once more in the same part, and 
what a change there was! The impersona- 






" Zaza " and Mrs. Leslie Carter. 203 

tion reached home the second time, and its 
power was doubly increased. 

"Zaza," the play, and Mrs. Carter, the 
actress, fitted one another perfectly. I mean 
by that, if the play appealed to one as a 
strong acting drama, Mrs. Carter likewise 
appealed to one as an unusually powerful 
emotional actress. If, however, one did not 
care for the play, — and I am referring to it 
as a work of art and not as a thing to be 
judged according to some moral standard, — 
if one found the play untrue to life, artificial, 
and a conveyer of theatrical shocks instead 
of a developer of character, except under 
extraordinary conditions of excitement one 
found Mrs. Carter lacking in conviction. 

"Zaza" did not impress me as a sincere 
play. It was not an honest study of a preg- 
nant human condition. It was solely a vehi- 
cle for theatrical effect. I would, however, 
except from this condemnation the first act, 
which was in the main truthful in its appeal. 



204 Famous Actresses. 

I do not pretend to say that its highly col- 
ourful and frankly vulgar action was a faith- 
ful representation of life behind the scenes 
in the second-class provincial music hall of 
France. But the human nature in the act 
was genuine ; the vulgarity was genuine, and 
to the extent that it was genuine it was 
justifiable. 

Mrs. Carter was decidedly excellent in this 
act. She set forth the woman Zaza with a few 
bold strokes that were really masterly in their 
simplicity. She made Zaza — the coarse, the 
low-bred — understandable, and by making 
her understandable as a human being, she 
saved Zaza from lasting condemnation, and 
gave her rank as a possible character study. 
After the first act I felt well acquainted with 
Zaza, the frank courtesan, who was as un- 
trammelled by social conventions as an ani- 
mal, a creature unmoral rather than immoral. 
When Zaza wanted a man, she attacked him 
directly, without subterfuge, without sugges- 



" Zaza " and Mrs. Leslie Carter. 205 

tiveness and without shame. By nature she 
was kind-hearted and generous, a woman in 
no sense vicious, though a good fighter and a 
good hater of those who in anyway crossed her. 
As the character was acted the first time 
I saw it, after the first act all development 
ceased, and Zaza became merely a lay figure 
by means of which Mrs. Carter exhibited her 
range as an emotional actress. She showed 
that she had at her command ample resources 
in the way of physical expression. Personally 
I prefer the quieter school of acting, but the 
power in the method adopted by Mrs. Carter 
is undeniable, if only the emotion in the mind 
of the actress be sympathetically reproduced 
in the mind of the spectator. To me, how- 
ever, Mrs. Carter seemed ever to be thinking 
what she should do next, instead of using all 
her personal force and insight to under- 
stand and interpret Zaza's mental condition. 
In the quiet moments of the last act Mrs. 
Carter was far more convincing. She had to 



2o6 Famous Actresses. 

show a Zaza reformed. Realising, perhaps, 
that the act was fundamentally weak, she 
bent all her energies to imprinting on the 
mind of the spectator the reformed Zaza, 
even against the spectator's calm judgment 
regarding the inherent untruthfulness of the 
situation. She succeeded, too, and that 
triumph was her greatest artistic achieve- 
ment. 

From Mrs. Carter at her worst, let me now 
turn to Mrs. Carter at her best. We shall 
find that a revision of opinion in certain par- 
ticulars is necessary. We shall find that not 
only is the spirit of the character entirely 
changed, but we shall see that the action 
itself is far more elaborated in respect to 
detail. In fact, the difference is not unlike 
that usually noticeable between the perform- 
ance of an understudy and a principal. At 
my first experience with the play, the curtain 
of the first act amounted to nothing at all. 
Zaza simply walked off the stage. The 



" Zaza " and Mrs. Leslie Carter. 207 

second time she marched away singing in 
impudent triumph and with dare-devil reck- 
lessness at the top of her voice. It was a 
climax that fairly summed up the whole act. 

I found a dozen little bits of character 
sketching in the second act that were entirely 
new to me — the impetuous kicking off of 
the slippers, and touches here and there of 
rough comradeship in the interview with 
Cascart in particular. The third act, in- 
cluding the interview with the child, was 
played much the same both times. It was 
to my mind the poorest act in the play, an 
act only a step removed from the most vapid 
sentimentality. 

Nor was the fourth act greatly changed as 
far as action was concerned, until the very 
end, when the clock on the mantelpiece was 
sent crashing to the floor. I was much 
pleased at this, for it was expectation real- 
ised. The last act caused no new impres- 
sion. 



208 Famous Actresses. 

The chief fault to be found with Mrs. 
Carter's work, judging from the first view I 
had of it, was that she did not portray a char- 
acter after the first act, but merely gave 
an exhibition of acting. That criticism was 
unjust in the face of the new Zaza. Mrs. 
Carter's best work in the line of character 
development was done in the first two acts, 
the only acts in the play that were without 
that sentimentality which threatened the 
complete ruination of the Belasco adapta- 
tion. In the first act Mrs. Carter got Zaza 
before one with an economy of effort that 
was most admirable. Her play with Du- 
frene, its shamelessness, its frankness, 
its coarse heartlessness, was realistically 
vivid. 

The influence of the first act extended 
through the second, with this subtle dis- 
tinction : the Zaza of the first act was purely 
animal ; the Zaza of the second act, still a 
vulgar and unrefined Zaza in most respects, 



" Zaza " and Mrs. Leslie Carter. 209 

was in her love childlike and simple. With 
Dufrene in her heart she was almost pathetic 
in her unworldliness ; without Dufrene she 
was the creature of old, raging, tearing, 
blindly obeying instinct, without thought and 
without responsibility. 

Twice during the play Mrs. Carter left her 
character and merely acted, once in the third 
act, when she soliloquised in a monotone that 
was intended to convey great stress of mind 
and intense emotion, and once in the fourth 
act, when she again adopted the same method 
of expression. Neither time was the illusion 
of spontaneity created. Mrs. Carter's hys- 
terical self-abandonment during the whirl- 
wind climax of the fourth act was not the 
highest form of dramatic art. In moments 
of such extreme emotion, suggestion is more 
effective than bald exposition. But in the 
character which she was portraying Mrs. 
Carter found justification for her hysteria. 
At any rate, her lack of reserve power was 



2 10 Famous Actresses. 

not felt as it would have been in a part more 
subtle and more complex. 

No review of " Zaza " would be complete 
without at least a passing reference to Marie 
Bates's superfine low comedy as Zaza's Aunt 
Rosa. Miss Bates was wonderfully funny in 
the dressing-room scene of the first act, but 
it was not until her talk with the Due de 
Brissac at the opening of the fourth act that 
she touched the very limit of delightful and 
ingenious humour. It was then that Aunt 
Rosa related with wealth of detail her single 
matrimonial experience, its tragic termina- 
tion and the accompanying punishment of 
the erring husband by " cracking him over 
the head." Incidentally she expounded from 
her peculiar standpoint the whole philosophy 
of life. Aunt Rosa was uncompromisingly 
worldly, which was not to be wondered at 
when one perceived that her youthful dream 
of idealised love had been ruthlessly shattered 
by a man, who not only had no money, but 



" Zaza" and Mrs. Leslie Carter. 211 

who committed the unpardonable sin of re- 
fusing to work for any, and who also practised 
successfully for years the hazardous pleasure 
of deceiving a trusting wife. 

One could hardly expect elevating views 
on the marriage state and wifely devotion 
from one whose past had been so bitterly 
disillusionising, nor was it altogether strange 
that absinthe, in every one of its nerve-rack- 
ing forms, had been resorted to as a potent 
comforter in moments of despondency. Aunt 
Rosa frankly declared that, should she again 
elect to venture on the stormy seas of matri- 
mony, she would choose for her sailing mate 
a man who could deck her with diamonds 
from head to feet ; a striking conception of 
bodily adornment, which appealed strongly 
to the imagination. Aunt Rosa would in- 
deed have been an imposing figure in such a 
dazzling costume. 

Strange as it may appear, I have noticed 
persons sniffing disdainfully at Aunt Rosa, 



212 Famous Actresses, 

evidently regarding her as unmistakably 
coarse, and irredeemably vulgar. A few 
minutes later the same persons have wept 
sad, salt tears into their pocket handker- 
chiefs, full of sympathy for the unhappy 
Zaza, just turned down so unreservedly by 
her lover. This condition of mind was curi- 
ously inconsistent, though it was easy to see 
that it was deliberately caused by the subtle 
David Belasco, who in " Zaza " very prettily 
changed black iniquity into snow-white 
purity. Aunt Rosa was not a " nice " 
woman, but had the saving grace of hon- 
esty. She travelled under her real colours. 
Like Zaza, she had been deceived by a man, 
— her husband at that, — but she expected no 
sympathy ; she was satisfied with the ample re- 
venge of " cracking him over the head." Zaza 
was not " nice," either. There was no imagin- 
able life condition where she would not be 
looked upon as the most hopeless of social out- 
casts, and, therefore, completely outside the 



" Zaza" and Mrs. Leslie Carter. 213 

pall of kindly consideration. She, like Aunt 
Rosa, was unspeakably coarse and irredeem- 
ably vulgar. 

Was it not remarkable that Mr. Belasco 
and Mrs. Carter, working in unison, could 
literally twist one into a mental state where 
the most evident of social conventionalities 

— those that one instinctively looks upon as 
essential without the necessity of argument 

— became positively repugnant ; could bring 
one to think that the wronged wife was a 
sinner and the mistress a saint, the man who 
caused it all practically a nonentity ? Right 
here was the irreconcilable difference between 
" Zaza " and " The Second Mrs. Tanqueray." 
In " Zaza " one pitied the woman and con- 
doned her fault ; in Pinero's play one also 
pitied the woman, — that was humane and 
right, — but at the same time he found her 
sin most abhorrent and hateful. That, it 
seems to me, is morality of the most vital 
and the most lofty description. 



CHAPTER XIV. 

ANNA HELD. 

It is food for speculation exactly how much 
of Anna Held's strong popular hold on the 
theatregoing public is due to the spectacular 
quality of her own career. She is a wonder- 
fully fascinating study, — this little French- 
woman, — the positive exception to the 
established routine of human experience. 
Where else can one witness wild and irre- 
sponsible notoriety — the incubator product 
of freak advertising and weird press yarns — 
grown into dignified and sober reputation? 
How vastly have the Anna Held surround- 
ings changed since 1 899 ! In the days of 
"The French Maid" she was served up to 
us with circus-like garnishings, and even 
214 



Anna Held. 215 

as recently as the season of 1899- 1900 vivid 
descriptions of her private car and her auto- 
mobile alternated with adjective-studded 
praises of her personal attractions and her 
marvellous raiment. The season of 1900- 
190 1, however, found all this was changed, 
and the Anna Held campaign became strik- 
ingly free from hysterics. Her managers 
placed her before the public on her merits 
as an artist, and the public accepted her as 
thoroughly worthy of her newly acquired 
dignity. 

The step from milk baths to refined art 
was a long one to take under any circum- 
stances, but in Miss Held's case it was the 
more remarkable, because of the ease and 
quickness with which it was accomplished. 
Mrs. Leslie Carter jumped from crude ama- 
teurism in "The Ugly Duckling" to amaz- 
ing theatrical emotionalism in "The Heart 
of Maryland," but it took David Belasco 
nearly two seasons of continuous effort to 



216 Famous Actresses. 

accomplish the feat. And, after all, was 
Mrs. Carter's transformation any more start- 
ling than that experienced by little Anna 
Held in a single summer? Leslie Carter 
lost her crudity in a maze of authoritative 
artificialities ; Anna Held passed from the 
hopelessly impossible inanities of Suzette 
in " The French Maid " to genuine exposi- 
tion of character in "Papa's Wife" — and 
she learned to talk English while she was 
doing it. Perhaps you have forgotten just 
how hopeless Anna Held was in "The 
French Maid." Refresh your memory by 
reading this New York review of one of her 
last appearances in the part : 

"Miss Held was very tiny in what Mr. 
Rice called 'the frisky English novelty.' 
She wore tiny dresses and tiny shoes ; she 
sang in a tiny voice and she spoke in a tiny 
voice. She wore all her nerves on the sur- 
face, and she flung herself recklessly about 
the stage, as though she had St. Vitus's 



Anna Held. 217 

dance. In coquettish moments she turned 
her left shoulder-blade to the men in the 
cast, and stood in her famous French-maid 
attitude, the attitude of the leaning tower of 
Pisa. La Held indulges in little English 
slangeries, such as <I see my finish,' and 
other pert colloquialisms, but they do not 
suit her very well. Her English is just a 
trifle more intelligible *than it was in * La 
Poupee/ but it is very squeaky. In fact, 
she talks like one of those French dolls, 
which, when you pull a string, say 'mama,' 
'papa,' and in the Grand Opera House, 
which would hold the tones of Lilli Leh. 
mann, she was comparatively lost. In the 
second act she introduced some specialties 
in which she was far more at ease than she 
was with Suzette. The sustained perform- 
ance seemed to tire poor Anna, for all she 
had to do was to toy with her skirts, sigh 
a few * ahs ! ' and murmur the slang to which 
I have already alluded." 



218 Famous Actresses. 

So essentially dramatic was Anna Held's 
unexpected blossoming forth as a serious 
entity, that the temptation to write about 
her in superlatives is hard to resist. Indeed, 
so consistently was she praised in superlatives 
during her first performances of "Papa's 
Wife" that I almost dreaded seeing her the 
second time in the farce, for fear I should 
find that success had made her obtrusively 
self-conscious and banished the air of pro- 
voking innocence that vested with so much 
charm her impersonation of the convent- 
bred girl-wife. I dared not hope that I 
should find Anna Held better than she was 
the previous season; I should have been 
entirely satisfied if I had found her as good. 
Nevertheless, improved she certainly was, 
mainly in her English and in her singing, but 
perceptibly in her acting, especially as re- 
gards repose, authority, and sure grasp of 
character. This improvement killed what- 
ever doubt there might have been regarding 




ANNA HELD 
As Anna in " Papa's Wife. 



Anna Held. 219 

Miss Held's future ; it gave one faith in her 
permanency; it proved that "Papa's Wife" 
was not wholly an accident. 

It is difficult to analyse an art so delicate 
and fragile as that developed by Anna Held. 
It is an art, of course, that has its definite 
and somewhat narrow limitations. Except 
for the danger one runs of being misunder- 
stood, it might not unaptly be termed " par- 
lour "art — that is to say, art which is inti- 
mate in its appeal and which shines at its 
brightest in the small-sized theatre. Anna 
Held's personal charm is very similar to that 
exercised so potently by Minnie Ashley — a 
trifle less girlish, a trifle more complexed, and 
decidedly more subtle and insinuating. Al- 
though, normally, Miss Held is femininely 
frivolous and frothy, she displays in climactic 
flashes an ability to strike the note of sincere 
emotion, and to portray hysteria without be- 
coming hysterical. The possession of this 
faculty does not by any means imply that she 



220 Famous Actresses. 

could successfully carry off a scene demanding 
the portrayal of sustained emotion. But that 
she should have any capacity at all for emo- 
tion is sufficiently remarkable. The chief 
single factor in Miss Held's technical equip- 
ment is her eyes. These are wonderful 
vehicles of expression, and she uses them, 
somewhat artificially and self-consciously, 
but effectively none the less. Often they 
furnish practically all of her pantomime, as 
in the case of the opening song of the first 
act of "Papa's Wife" — the song in which 
she tells how innocent she is. 

" Papa's Wife," the "comedy with music/' 
which the tireless Harry B. Smith was in- 
spired to write by the combined efforts of 
two Frenchmen named Hennequin and Mil- 
laud, was a deceptive, as well as an enter- 
taining, little farce. It was deceptive because 
it was so much better than it appeared to be. 
Of course, there was no denying that its some- 
what pliable backbone was very much stiff- 






Anna Held. 221 

ened by the dainty presence of Miss Held 
and the ludicrous absurdities of Charles A. 
Bigelow. Yet there was merit — unusual 
merit, when the general average is considered 
— in the piece itself. There must have 
been, or else I should not have enjoyed see- 
ing it a second time, presented, as it was, by a 
company that was not the equal of the origi- 
nal cast. 

It was puzzling to determine just where 
this extra merit was concealed, for " Papa's 
Wife," in the passing, impressed one as reach- 
ing for the limit of inconsequential frivolity. 
Possibly, if one declared that the farce had 
"style," he would mildly hint at the quality 
that gave the show unexpected permanency. 
By successfully weaving into one action the 
separate stories of two French vaudevilles, 
Mr. Smith seemingly caught the haunting 
spirit — the dash, the delicate suggestive- 
ness, and the vivacity — of the originals in 
most remarkable fashion. This is just the 



222 Famous Actresses. 

spirit that escapes most adaptations of French 
farce. Rendered into English, they become 
mere machines — noisy, vulgar, and clumsy. 

Now, "Papa's Wife" was only once or 
twice obstrusively noisy ; only once or twice 
unduly vulgar ; and actually clumsy, never. 
Still, I cannot be sure that I have not over- 
burdened the versatile Mr. Smith with praise. 
There was that fascinating enigma, Anna 
Held, to be taken into account. How much 
had her new-found delicacy, her just dis- 
covered subtilty, her freshly acquired author- 
ity, and her personal charm, only recently 
irresistible, to do with the excellence of 
" Papa's Wife ? " All were so continuously 
astonishing that one feared to dwell on them 
too enthusiastically lest he should say too 
much. It was not the solo bits in Miss 
Held's impersonation that impressed me the 
most strongly, however — the intoxication 
scene in the second act, for instance, which 
was generally considered the acme of her 



Anna Held. 223 

histrionic endeavour. The climax of that 
scene was, to be sure, played with effective 
appeal, but it was, after all, onlya climax, 
with no evidence in itself of sustained power. 
No, this was brilliant, but it was not extraor- 
dinary. I do, however, regard as extraordi- 
nary Miss H eld's consistent and constantly 
understandable exposition of Anna's char- 
acter amid surroundings that favoured 
neither consistency nor clearness. The at- 
mosphere of the convent -bred French girl 
of almost pitiful, even pathetic, innocence, 
was not only artistically realised, but it was 
continuously maintained with a skill that was 
far more worthy and far more suggestive of 
future possibilities than the casual brilliancy 
displayed in the intoxication scene. 

The secret of Anna Held's birthplace is 
locked safely in her own bosom. Her mana- 
ger clings persistently to the statement that 
she is a Parisienne, but persons who pretend 
to know claim that she is a native of Indiana. 



224 Famous Actresses. 

At all events, she was first heard of in this 
country when she filled the place left vacant 
by Charmion at Koster and Bial's music hall 
in New York. Her success there was un- 
qualified, and induced her manager, F. Zeig- 
feld, Jr., to arrange for featuring her in an 
Evans and Hoey revival of "A Parlour 
Match." The revival occurred at the Herald 
Square Theatre in New York, and, largely 
because of the excellent advertising resultant 
from the milk bath "fake," proved profitable 
not only in New York but in other Eastern 
cities. 

An attempt to make Miss Held popular on 
the Pacific coast was not so fortunate, how- 
ever. She was sent to San Francisco with a 
combination that included Paul Wilstach's 
farce, "A Gay Deceiver," and the Chinese 
tragedy, "The Cat and the Cherub," but the 
tour was most disastrous. Subsequently Mr. 
Zeigfeld purchased the rights of " A French 
Maid," which E. E. Rice had introduced in 



Anna Held. 225 

this country, and starred Miss Held in the 
piece. Barring a brief and thoroughly un- 
satisfactory series of appearances in " La 
Poupee " at Hammerstein's Olympia in New 
York, this was Miss Held's first attempt at 
serious work. It must be confessed that she 
was pretty bad. Mr. Zeigfeld, who, mean- 
while, had announced his marriage to Anna 
Held, was not dismayed, however, but pur- 
chased a musical comedy for her from Harry 
B. Smith and Reginald de Koven. This 
comedy was " Papa's Wife." 



CHAPTER XV. 

SARAH COWELL LEMOYNE. 

The notable feature of "The Greatest 
Thing in the World," the modern comedy by 
Harriet Ford and Beatrice DeMille, in which, 
in March, 1900, Sarah Cowell LeMoyne 
began her career as an independent star, 
was Mrs. LeMoyne's admirable characterisa- 
tion of Virginia Bryant, and the notable 
feature of this characterisation was Mrs. 
LeMoyne's magnificent repose. No player 
on the American stage excels Mrs. LeMoyne 
in the qualities of self-command and restful- 
ness. She always ,'satisfies, and she never 
gets on one's nerves. This is a supreme 
achievement of histrionic art. It betokens 

the finest of dramatic instinct and the most 
226 



Sarah Cowell LeMoyne. 227 

complete grasp of character united with depth 
of feeling and resourcefulness of technical 
equipment. Mrs. LeMoyne knows the effect 
that she wishes to produce, and, more than 
that, she knows how to get this effect in the 
most direct and simple manner and with the 
least possible expenditure of energy. She 
never forces herself upon the attention in place 
of the character she is portraying, and yet one 
is always conscious of the potency of her 
personality, guiding and directing every 
movement, every inflection of the voice, and 
every gesture. Imagination colours all that 
she does, and the result is a well-nigh perfect 
impression of nature. 

The theme of " The Greatest Thing in the 
World " was mother love, and the main plot 
detailed the struggle of a mother to save her 
son from an inherited appetite for alcohol 
and from the consequences of certain ques- 
tionable acts directly traceable to the boy's 
overindulgence in drink. On the face of it 



228 Famous Actresses, 

there was material for a strong emotional 
drama. The problem was real and vital, and 
the conditions described were by no means 
strange or incomprehensible. For the ex- 
position of this problem the authors of " The 
Greatest Thing in the World" used five 
characters — the mother, Mrs. Bryant ; the 
son, Cecil Bryant ; the young woman who 
loved and was beloved by the son, Helen 
MacFarland ; this young woman's father, 
David MacFarland, who had business rela- 
tions with the son and who loved the mother 
with all the force of a strong, passionate 
nature habitually repressed ; and MacFar- 
land's brother-in-law, Geoffrey Townsend, 
who also loved Mrs. Bryant. These five 
characters were absolutely essential to the 
development of the plot, and they were the 
only characters that were essential. 

Act one of the play passed during a re- 
ception in Mrs. Bryant's house. Cecil, 
plainly under the influence of liquor, had 



Sarah Cow ell LeMoyne. 229 

forced his attentions on Helen, and she finally 
was obliged to refuse longer to dance with 
him. Cecil, in a rage, ordered the music 
stopped. Mrs. Bryant partially succeeded 
in diverting the attention of her guests from 
this outburst, and in excusing her son. It 
was developed that Cecil, after securing a 
check for one thousand dollars from Mac- 
Farland, had raised the amount to ten thou- 
sand dollars. He was in danger of prosecu- 
tion from MacFarland, whose Scotch blood 
abhorred any connivance with a felony. The 
act closed with a scene between Helen 
and Cecil, in which the girl declared that 
she would not listen to words of love from 
a man in Cecil's condition. The boy lost 
control of himself, and kissed her passion- 
ately. Again the mother interposed just in 
time to prevent an exposure and a scandal. 

Act two, at Mrs. Bryant's house, depicted 
a very touching interview — one of the finest 
moments of the play — between the mother 



230 Famous Actresses. 

and son, in which the son confessed all the 
miserable business of the night before. 
Further there was made plain Mrs. Bryant's 
position toward Townsend, whom she loved, 
and MacFarland, whom she did not love. 
Act three, in MacFarland's house, was well 
imagined. Cecil, against his mother's wishes, 
called to see Helen, and, to avoid Mrs. Bry- 
ant, who was there also for the purpose of 
talking with the girl, he hid himself behind 
the piano. Thus concealed, he heard Mac- 
Farland tell his mother of the raised check ; 
he listened to her plea for a reprieve, and, 
finally, to her offer to marry MacFarland if 
he would spare her son. Cecil, however, 
could not remain passive while Helen de- 
nounced him, and stepped forth from his 
hiding-place. For the third time the mother 
tried her best to conceal his shame, but a 
moment later, when he was alone with her, 
her wrath and bitterness found expression in 
words of denunciation and outraged affec- 



Sarah Cowell LeMoyne 231 

tion. The conclusion of the play was rightly 
enough the foreshadowed reformation of the 
young man. MacFarland refused to accept 
the mother's sacrifice, acknowledging that he 
had been too harsh, and that he was actu- 
ated, though unconsciously, by an unworthy 
motive of revenge because Mrs. Bryant could 
not return his love. 

The emotional tension of the plot was 
immeasurably increased by the fact that the 
authors eliminated entirely the element of 
viciousness from their characters. There 
was not an intrinsically bad person in the 
play. Cecil was wofully weak, but his faults 
were almost entirely temperamental. Mac- 
Farland's momentary relapse from an ideal- 
istic plane of truth and justice consisted in 
substituting the letter of the law for the best 
interests of the individual. Why he pursued 
such a patently unfair course he did not per- 
ceive until his eyes were opened by Mrs. 
Bryant's act of supreme self-sacrifice. 



232 Famous Actresses. 

On the surface here would appear to be 
a moving emotional play with good reasons 
for existence; and a moving emotional 
play " The Greatest Thing in the World " 
would have been if the authors had not 
been unduly impressed with the mechanics 
of play-writing. With what was undoubtedly 
a commendable purpose, — that of brighten- 
ing the action, — they so clouded the first 
act as to make it difficult to learn for some 
time what was going on. Later, however, 
this fault was partially remedied, and the 
attempt to turn the act into a spectacle 
was abandoned, and the stage was not encum- 
bered with supernumeraries who were sup- 
posed to represent the guests at Mrs. 
Bryant's party, but who became chiefly de- 
tractors of the spectator's attention from 
the personages necessary to the action. 
The scene was given over without diversion 
to Cecil, Helen, Mrs. Bryant, MacFarland, 
and Townsend. As originally presented, one 



Sarah Co we 11 LeMoyne. 233 

had difficulty in fixing exactly Mrs. Bryant's 
mental condition. He failed readily to under- 
stand the subterfuge, by means of which she 
sought to protect her intoxicated son from 
public scorn and exposure. That blindness 
was largely done away with in the revision, 
to the vast improvement of the drama. 

Impressed with the necessity of comic 
relief, the authors introduced every act in 
the most irrelevant fashion, thus destroying 
the illusion of emotional stress, which was the 
artistic heritage from the climaxes of the 
preceding acts. Again, for the purpose of 
comic effect, they invented two pairs of 
lovers, one pair youthful and one pair mid- 
dle-aged, in whom there was but the faintest 
interest, and, in addition, a mumbling negro 
servant who was a positive nuisance. Madge 
Chiselworth, one of the young lovers, was 
the personification of aggravating theatrical 
girlishness, not to be considered seriously 
except, possibly, as a petulant child sorely 



234 Famous Actresses. 

in need of proper discipline. The love- 
scene between Doctor Chiselworth and his 
spinster flame was wholly extraneous — an 
episode without a semblance of relationship to 
the main action. Harold Bryant, the manly 
younger son, was a fine conception, and he was 
valuable in his proper position as foil to the 
weak-kneed Cecil ; but Harold, too, became 
a drag when the action had to be halted, in 
order that he might make love to the kitten- 
ish Madge. A drama is an intricate bit 
of machinery. It is a puzzling mass of cog- 
wheels, fitting perfectly one into another, and 
a single wheel misplaced, or a single tooth on 
a single wheel untruly cut, means faulty con- 
nections, lost motion, even a serious break- 
down. The comedy of Miss Ford and Mrs. 
DeMille did not fit. It was not a relief from 
emotional tension, nor a needed contrast to 
the serious import of the main motive of the 
play; it was always a blemish, an irritating 
distraction, and a destroyer of illusion. 



Sarah Cowell LeMoyne. 235 

"The Greatest Thing in the World," 
therefore, impressed one as strong in mo- 
tive but weak in construction. It was 
plainly modelled after the Belasco-DeMille 
school of play-writing as displayed in "The 
Wife." The sentiment was honest, but it 
was not always sincerely treated. The intro- 
duction to the denunciation scene — the cli- 
max of the third act — was palpably false. 
There was no truth, no reason in Mrs. Bry- 
ant's attempt to shield Cecil after he had 
revealed himself in such despicable colours. 
Helen knew that he had been hiding, and 
Mrs. Bryant must instinctively have perceived 
that any attempt to conceal the evident fact 
was both futile and degrading. Simple treat- 
ment would have been more logical and far 
more impressive. Suppose she had expressed 
her scorn, her sorrow, and her surprise in 
some such phrase as " You here, Cecil ! " 
Then let her dismiss Helen with a word or 
gesture, and, after she has gone, let the 



236 Famous Actresses. 

mother pour forth her righteous wrath and 
indignation with the superlative of emotional 
expression. Would not the scene have been 
immeasurably more convincing? 

Mrs. LeMoyne's Mrs. Bryant was the 
best of high -class comedy acting. The 
emotional demands of the character were 
extraordinary, and it was simply astounding 
that Mrs. LeMoyne could meet them as easily 
as she did. From tenderest love to the break- 
ing mother's heart she was the mistress of 
every shade of emotion. She swept through 
the powerful climax of the third act with tre- 
mendous force. There was no hysteria, no 
loss of self-control, no laborious action, but 
the sense of power was overwhelming. One 
was moved completely out of himself by 
that notable reserve and that marvellous 
reflection of truth. 

In the spring of 1901 Mrs. LeMoyne, in 
conjunction with Otis Skinner and Eleanor 
Robson, made a special tour of the East and 



Sarah Cozvell LeMoyne. 237 

middle West in Robert Browning's tragedy 
in verse, " In a Balcony," Mrs. LeMoyne 
acting the queen, Mr. Skinner Norbert, and 
Miss Robson Constance. This dramatic frag- 
ment is tragedy in its highest and purest 
sense. Its thesis is impressive and inspiring, 
— namely, that truth is all-powerful, and 
that deceit can never prosper ; and this thesis 
is exposed with idealism that is in the fullest 
degree beautiful. Strength is never lacking, 
but it is strength divorced from coarseness, 
rudeness, and vulgarity. 

Comprehending a drama written in verse 
is scarcely less of an art than acting one. 
Verse, to a certain extent, is like a foreign 
language. For instance, one may thoroughly 
understand spoken French. Yet, after hear- 
ing nothing but English for a long period, if 
one try to follow a conversation in French, 
he finds that he cannot at first absorb in full 
the ideas conveyed by the alien tongue. 
His ear is not attuned to the language. So 



238 Famous Actresses. 

it is with verse — particularly with dramatic 
verse, which one hears but seldom. All the 
reading that one may do cannot give the 
exact effect of the articulated words. Con- 
sequently, when confronted with verse, in- 
stead of knowing what is meant, for a time 
one is simply listening to what is being said. 
His ear is not attuned to the language. 

Aside from this unavoidable difficulty, 
which was by no means pronounced in the 
production under consideration, the presenta- 
tion of " In a Balcony " was thoroughly intel- 
ligible. And, let me add, intelligibility is 
the main thing in dealing with the poetic 
drama. Poetry that is worth anything at all 
will force its way into the mind and heart, if 
only its meaning be perfectly understood. 
The reading of the three players, who acted 
"In a Balcony," was generally very good, 
Mr. Skinner's excellence in this particular 
being especially notable. His voice was 
clear and sufficiently strong, his enunciation 





OTIsSKINNEK. 



SARAH COWELL LE MOYNE 
And her associates in " In a Balcony. 



Sarah Cowell LeMoyne. 239 

distinct, and his expression of the thought 
always intelligent. Mrs. Le Moyne's reading 
was also marked by fine understanding and 
careful elocution, though, when I heard her, 
her voice was in poor condition. Miss Rob- 
son was less satisfactory in her delivery of 
the verse, which, however, does not imply 
that she was distinctly inferior, judged by 
the ordinary standard. Still, there were 
times when one could not catch every word 
that she uttered. This never happened with 
Mr. Skinner, and rarely with Mrs. LeMoyne. 
As already implied, acting in the poetic 
drama is closely bound up in the reading. 
The important thing is elocution. Perfect 
elocution means perfect understanding, and 
perfect understanding includes thorough 
character exposition. The atmosphere of 
idealistic tragedy surrounding a play like " In 
a Balcony" demands from the player deep 
feeling, sweeping imagination, and noble 
repose. The player must never show the 



240 Famous Actresses. 

limits of his art. His range must be of the 
broadest ; his horizon must extend far beyond 
the visible outposts ; his power must be 
infinite in suggestion. Small things, narrow 
methods and petty realism are wholly out of 
place. It is the imagination of the spectator 
that must be reached. Theatric surroundings 
and human littleness are fatal. The spectator 
must be projected into a dreamland that is 
vast, grand, and eternal. 

Mr. Skinner was very successful in attain- 
ing the inspiring boldness and breadth of 
style, the lofty serenity of manner, and the 
rich, sonorous quality of voice that instinc- 
tively make one forget detail and realise 
effects. His Norbert was a heroic figure 
with humanity idealised and passion pure, 
free, soulful. One read his character as 
though it were written in large letters. 

Mrs. LeMoyne's mighty stroke was in 
depicting the woman in contrast with the 
queen, and she reached a supreme height 



Sarah Cowell LeMoyne. 241 

when, in voicing hex yearning for love, she 
declared that there had been times when, if 
the soldier guarding the palace gate had 
thrown his weapon at her feet and clasped 
her about the knees in mad adoration, she 
would have stooped and kissed him. In in- 
tensity of passion and in culmination of cli- 
mactic force, that moment was the most 
impressive of the play. It brought one with 
vividness face to face with a naked and 
starving soul. Indeed, Mrs. LeMoyne indi- 
cated with insistent power and with surging 
pathos the wonderful absorption of this 
woman in the love that she thought never 
would come to her, love that she had dreamed 
of, longed for but discarded as impossible. 
One saw the queen tender, sympathetic, 
childlike under its influence, radiating joy 
and youthfulness in her happiness. This 
was great acting, though perhaps no greater 
than the persistency of hate and the implaca- 
bility of relentless purpose, displayed, — after 



242 Famous Actresses. 

the queen knew that Norbert's love was for 
Constance, — not by means of words, but in 
the attitude of stern immobility. 

Contrasting with Mr. Skinner's splendid 
and idealistic nobleman, and Mrs. LeMoyne's 
queenly woman and offended queen, was the 
pure humanness and womanly simplicity of 
Miss Robson's Constance. Mr. Skinner 
portrayed a hero in love, and Mrs. LeMoyne 
a queen loving and hating. Miss Robson 
was the eternal feminine — fond, sly in de- 
ceit, self-sacrificing, and, at the end, brave, 
true, and secure. Constance, a woman her- 
self, was suspicious of her queen, and that 
suspicion, unworthy and unjust, was the sole 
cause of the tragedy. Constance doubted 
the expediency of honesty ; she feared the 
truth ; she counselled deception. And Nor- 
bert, who should have been strong and 
faithful, weakly followed her lead. There 
began his responsibility in the tragedy, and 
there was fixed the full justice of punish- 






Sarah Cowell LeMoyne. 243 

ment for him equal to that meted out to 
Constance. 

Miss Robson, in personality, fitted with 
nicety this feminine conception. She was 
the clinging vine, devoted and well meaning, 
but narrow and vague, loving much, but ad- 
vising ill. Constance's nature was at first 
undeveloped and querulous. Her love, too, 
until fate dragged her toward the abyss, was 
delicate, but superficial. Before the cloud of 
disaster enshrouded her, she had not felt a 
woman's love, only a maiden's fondness. 
These subtle distinctions were all finely 
realised by Miss Robson. 



CHAPTER XVI. 

MARY SANDERS. 

I hold Mary ^Sanders an exception to all 
rules, for she is the only one of the many 
consistently girlish actresses, whom I have 
from time to time had to endure, that did 
not succeed, before a great many minutes 
had passed, in forcing upon me exceeding 
weariness. I have squirmed mentally at 
their insincerity, their unhumanity (if I may 
be permitted to make a word to fit the con- 
dition), their shameless lack of conviction, 
their sickening sentimentality, and their farci- 
cal kittenishness. I detest them all — ex- 
cept Mary Sanders. For some reason she 
is different. Her personality is positively 
magnetic; her temperament is perennially 
244 




MARY SANDERS. 



Mary Sanders. 245 

just sixteen; her sentiment — it is scarcely 
pathos — is sweetly wholesome ; her humour 
has freshness and spontaneity; her voice, 
too, is full of coaxing charm. She is not 
versatile ; she is not brilliant ; her art is 
narrow and her range limited. But she can 
do two things — impersonate the girl with 
skirts to her shoe-tops, and the winsome 
young woman suffering from her first love- 
affair — more effectively, more satisfactorily, 
and more realistically than any other actress 
in the country. As Miss Sanders does them, 
these two things seem easy enough ; but 
they must be hard, just the same, for no one 
but she can do them even ordinarily well. 

Mary Sanders, who, by the way, has a hus- 
band, Percy Winter, and children of her own, 
grew into young womanhood in Chicago. 
She studied acting in New York, under 
Steele Mackaye, the original Delsartian in 
this country. Her first part was a Breton 
peasant girl — a very small Breton peasant 



246 Famous Actresses. 

girl — in Mr. Mackaye's "Dakolar." This 
was the christening production at the 
New York Lyceum Theatre, and, as a fail- 
ure, "Dakolar" was an exceptional success. 
Next Miss Sanders went on a barn-storming 
trip through New York State, a trip that paid 
better in experience than it did in coin of the 
realm. She acted the following season with 
Helen Dauvray in " One of Our Girls," and 
after that with Effie Ellsler in " Camille," 
"Frou-Frou," and the corresponding reper- 
tory. In one of A. M. Palmer's road com- 
panies Miss Sanders played Agnes Ralston, 
the daughter in " Jim, the Penman," and she 
also supported Dion Boucicault in many of 
his Irish dramas. During the season of 
1890-91, she acted small parts with the E. 
S. Willard Company. This season was fol- 
lowed by summer stock work in Washington, 
as were two succeeding seasons with William 
H. Crane. Then came Miss Sanders's first 
attempt as a star, in a play called "Her 



Mary Sanders. 247 

Brother Bob," an experience which she does 
not talk about very much. Three seasons 
of stock work at the Castle Square Theatre 
in Boston preceded another scarcely less 
financially disastrous, though probably more 
artistically successful, starring venture. This 
was in " Little Nell and the Marchioness," a 
play by Harry P. Mawson, founded on 
Charles Dickens's "The Old Curiosity 
Shop." During the season of 1 900-1 901, 
Miss Sanders was the mainstay of Joseph 
Arthur's sensational display, "Lost River." 
If one were a bit sentimental by nature, 
and fond of seeing pale-faced but otherwise 
deserving children struggling with remorse- 
less fate, he likely enough thought Miss 
Sanders's Little Nell too lovely for words. 
If, on the other hand, children plainly in the 
advanced stages of tuberculosis proved more 
distressing than interesting, he was likely to 
consider Little Nell's tardy death a most wel- 
come relief. Of course Miss Sanders was 



248 Famous Actresses. 

not to be blamed for the spongy character of 
Little Nell ; she merely followed the Dickens' 
lead. Her Marchioness, moreover, told an- 
other story. There was no bread and milk 
and early to bed atmosphere about the Mar- 
chioness. No sad, salty, tearful eyes that 
seemed to say, " Please don't, kind sir, for 
I am an orphan che-ild ! " The Marchioness 
was decidedly down on her luck. She knew 
it, too, but she never lost her nerve. She 
did not cry baby, but she put her nose to 
the grindstone, and in that uncomfortable 
and undignified position worked out her own 
salvation. A keen sense of humour and an 
unhampered capacity for a good time were 
the happy characteristics of the Marchioness. 
Little Nell, on the other hand, had no con- 
ception of fun. Perhaps she was too good. 
It was a sense of humour that kept the Mar- 
chioness from becoming discouraged even 
amid the hardships of the Brass household. 
It made her ready to enjoy to the very limit 



Mary Sanders. 249 

the good times that Dick Swiveller provided 
for her. What would Little Nell have done 
under the same circumstances ? Would she 
have applied herself to the beer pot with zest 
and zeal ? Not she. She would have wept 
on Swiveller's manly bosom, greatly to that 
gentleman's discomfiture, and in violation 
of his sense of propriety. As Little Nell, 
Miss Sanders suggested the child surprisingly 
well, and there were many moments of touch- 
ing pathos in her impersonation. Yet the 
conception lacked individuality and a perfect 
atmosphere of sweetness and innocence. 
Miss Sanders came nearest this in the quaint 
little speech accepting Mrs. Jarley's hospital- 
ity. Her Marchioness, on the other hand, 
never missed fire except when Mr. Mawson 
tried to piece out the Dickens dialogue with 
lines of his own. 

Mr. Mawson's play curiously uncovered 
all the pitfalls that lie in the way of the 
dramatist who tries to put another man's 



250 Famous Actresses. 

material — developed in a different literary 
form — on the stage, and at the same time 
meet the requirements of a player who wishes 
to "star." Mr. Mawson was faithful always 
to the duty of securing the curtain for his 
star at the conclusion of every act. Half the 
time the curtain fell legitimately to her, and 
half the time it did not. The climax of 
the second act was plainly Swiveller's, and 
the Marchioness was dragged in at the ex- 
pense of an anti-climax. The end of the 
play certainly came with the death of Quilp, 
and nothing occurred during the last scene, 
which was introduced entirely for the sake 
of the Marchioness, that could not have been 
incorporated with better effect in the first 
scene of the act. Looking at Mr. Mawson's 
play from one view-point, one was inclined to 
think that he would have made a better drama 
if he had not clung so closely to his Dickens. 
Changing his point of observation, one came 
to the conclusion that the reason why Mr. 






Mary Sanders. 251 

Mawson's adaptation was not always effective 
was because he did not get close enough to 
his Dickens, because he had failed thoroughly 
to saturate himself with the Dickens spirit. 
Mr. Mawson tried to reproduce too many of 
the Dickens incidents and failed to catch to 
any convincing extent the Dickens atmos- 
phere. In his interpolated dialogue he 
never in the least suggested his model, and 
one could perceive as readily as if he had 
the book before him where the Dickens 
speeches ended, and where those of Mr. 
Mawson's writing began. 

The first act of the play passed in the Old 
Curiosity Shop. Little Nell was brought 
home to her grandfather by Mr. Garland, in 
whom Mr. Mawson united the Dickens Gar- 
land with the mysterious single gentleman 
and the kindly old bachelor. Fred Trent's 
and Dick Swiveller's interview with the 
grandfather followed, and then Quilp, Mrs. 
Quilp, and Sammy Brass entered. The 



252 Famous Actresses. 

long-suffering Mrs. Quilp played her un- 
willing part as Quilp' s tool, the dwarf thus 
learning the use to which the aged grand- 
father was putting his borrowed money. 
The expulsion of the old man and the child 
from their home followed in quick order, and 
the act ended with the midnight flight of the 
two. Brass's office was shown in the second 
act. We saw the culmination of the conspir- 
acy which resulted in the arrest of the innocent 
Kit, and we made the acquaintance of the 
much abused Marchioness, and were mightily 
amused by her revelry with the jaunty Swiv- 
eller. This act should have ended effectively 
with the discharge of Swiveller, but Mr. 
Mawson felt it necessary to bring in the 
Marchioness and seat her on the calcium 
illuminated table while the curtain went 
down. 

The third act in the "Three Jolly Sand- 
boys" inn accomplished little except the 
death of Little Nell. Short Trotters, 



Mary Sanders. 253 

Tommy Codlin, and Mrs. Jarley appeared 
on the scene without any especial reason 
therefor. The death of Little Nell came 
suddenly and unexpectedly, yet the scene 
carried well, owing to the exquisite simplicity 
with which Miss Sanders played it. The 
last act was divided into three scenes, the 
first depicting Swiveller's recovery from his 
illness under the nursing of the Marchioness, 
and the discovery of the plot against Kit. 
The second scene showed the death of 
Quilp, thus bringing the drama to a logical 
conclusion. The exigencies of the star, 
however, were again considered by the 
thoughtful Mr. Mawson, who took us back 
to Swiveller's lodgings and made us the wit- 
nesses of that gentleman's betrothal to the 
Marchioness. 

The chief difficulty with " Little Nell and 
the Marchioness " was that one's attention 
was constantly frittered away between two 
characters, which had absolutely no connec- 



254 Famous Actresses. 

tion one with the other. The Marchioness, 
if she had been given first place through all 
the four acts, might have proved a worthy 
study. But such a method of procedure, it 
might be argued, would not have resulted 
in a stage version of "The Old Curiosity 
Shop." Of course it would not, but it 
might have resulted in a satisfactory play, 
which would have been much more to the 
point. 

In Joseph Arthur's roaring melodrama, 
"Lost River," Miss Sanders played the 
homespun heroine Ora, to ingratiate whom 
with the gallery gods the gifted dramatist 
laboured most zealously and successfully. 
In the first place Ora spoke very poor Eng- 
lish, a distinctly popular condition, and in 
the second place, she never failed ultimately 
to thwart the villain. Once she had to chase 
him on a bicycle to do it. Another time 
she rode after him on a horse. Still a third 
time she came near drowning in a river of 



Mary Sanders. 255 

real water. Altogether she could scarcely 
have failed to be delightful in the eyes of 
melodramatically inspired spectators. How- 
ever, for Miss Sanders it may be said that 
she imbued this energetic part with her own 
magnetic personality, acted it with a sincerity 
that was surprising under the circumstances, 
and, more remarkable still, made a distinct 
impression of individuality. 

Of the play, "Lost River," there is 
nothing to be said. It was written for such 
as like their drama spiced with sensation to 
the very last mouth. "The Still Alarm" 
with its fire-engine, and " Blue Jeans " with 
its sawmill, were, in their day, considered 
quite the limit in sensationalism, but each 
one of them might be called a little baby 
brother to "Lost River." "Lost River" 
was the positive superlative. I have a faint 
impression that its plot was not altogether a 
stranger, and that its characters were more 
remarkable for their usefulness in aiding and 



256 Famous Actresses. 

abetting the general excitement than they 
were for arousing any degree of interest on 
their own behalf. But what of that ? " Lost 
River" was a thriller. That comprehends 
all criticism. 



CHAPTER XVII. 

ADA REHAN'S NELL GWYN. 

Paul Kester's play, last known as 
" Sweet Nell of Old Drury," had a history 
of its own that was of considerable interest. 
Mr. Kester is still a young man, and con- 
sequently, when he wrote the play, some- 
thing over five years ago, he could not have 
been much more than a boy. The work was 
produced, under the title " Nell Gwyn," by 
Rhea, during one of her last tours as a minor 
circuit star. Whatever success it gained, 
was not great enough to attract undue at- 
tention to the youthful dramatist. Indeed, 
when, early in the season of 1900-1901, Julia 
Neilson brought out the drama in London, 
it was generally considered to be a new work. 
257 



258 Famous Actresses. 

Ada Rehan produced the play on this side of 
the water, in Buffalo, New York, on Novem- 
ber 26, 1900, and inasmuch as this was the 
first new character that she had assumed 
since the death of Augustin Daly, — in fact, 
since she acted Lady Garnett in " The Great 
Ruby," — the venture naturally attracted 
widespread attention. 

" Sweet Nell " proved to be a comedy with 
melodramatic and farcical trimmings. Mr. 
Kester started with Nell Gwyn selling 
oranges before the Drury Lane Theatre, 
carried her straightway into the affections 
of King Charles II., and brought her safely 
through a somewhat bewildering controversy 
with a Lord Jeffreys so terrible that one 
wondered not that bad children were fright- 
ened into being good children by the mere 
mention of his name. Compared with Lord 
Jeffreys, the ordinary villain of ordinary melo- 
drama was as the gentle cow mooing softly 
at sunset in anticipation of the evening milk- 






Ada Reharis Nell Gwyn. 259 

ing. But I stray on unholy ground. " Sweet 
Nell " was not melodrama, though it did now 
and then suggest that melodrama might be 
peeping through the fence ready to jump 
into the dooryard as soon as Mr. Kester's 
back was turned. 

As a matter of fact, Mr. Kester's play 
seemed pretty much what the actors made 
it, and Miss Rehan's company chose to make 
it a very fair imitation of comedy. The 
drama itself was colourful in spots, but it 
was not strong. It lacked ingenuity, and 
it lacked subtilty. When he wrote " Sweet 
Nell," Mr. Kester apparently had not ac- 
quired the knack of explaining things and 
then making them seem just to happen. 
This faculty, of course, is the backbone of 
play writing. Mr. Kester continually re- 
sorted to the old tricks. Three times, for 
instance, he had personages in hiding escape 
by running across the back of the stage, or 
by dodging out through side entrances, while 



260 Famous Actresses. 

other characters, who would, under common- 
sense circumstances, have seen them, were 
engaged in conversation near the footlights. 
The soliloquy, which forced Nell into the 
robes of the Chief Justice, was astonishingly 
clumsy. Every one knew what she was going 
to do, and naturally one could not help wish- 
ing that she would stop talking about uninter- 
esting things, do what she had to do, and get 
on with the play. Again, in the last act, 
the interruption of the king by Nell's song 
as he was about to sign the death-warrant, 
was so old a device that it groaned and tot- 
tered when pushed from its hiding-place into 
the glare of the calcium. So it was continu- 
ally. Mr. Kester displayed a curious fond- 
ness for all the time-honoured tools, which 
was right enough, but he showed positively 
no ability so to use them, that one would 
not believe that they were the time-honoured 
tools. The dramatist, who lets one peer into 
his workshop, is taking chances. Only Pine- 



Ada Reharis Nell Gwyn. 261 

ros and Sardous can afford to show how it is 
done. 

However, all this is the unpleasant side of 
the picture. Let us try a new light. Mr. 
Kester's play certainly had colour, atmos- 
phere to a degree, action in plenty, effective 
curtains for all its acts, a group of characters 
that with the supplementary aid of history 
were interesting, not a little genuine comedy, 
considerable wit, and a rough and ready ex- 
pediency that hustled one over the rough 
places without inflicting half so much damage 
to the sensibilities as might have been ex- 
pected. The first act, to be sure, began 
slowly and weakly, and even after Nell 
entered the scene, interest in her was not 
acute enough to make convincing her self- 
sacrificing love for Sir Roger Fairfax. With 
the coming of the king, however, matters im- 
proved, and Nell's comedy interview with 
Charles was entertaining. The closing epi- 
sode of the act, which showed how Nell 



262 Famous Actresses. 

learned the identity of the king, was also 
capital. 

The second act was, perhaps, the best of 
the play. At least, it was in construction 
the smoothest and the neatest. The draw- 
ing of the actor Percival was effective ; the 
exchange of back-handed compliments be- 
tween Nell and the women of the court 
carried well ; and the climax — the entrance 
of the king when Fairfax was expected — 
was dramatic. The third act, though less 
deftly put forward, was capable, even if it 
were nearer melodrama of the blood and 
thunder, " Obey me, my child, or thy lover 
shall die" sort, than it was near comedy. 
However, barring the hitch in getting Nell 
into Jeffreys's wig and gown, it passed with 
breeziness, and one's hatred of Jeffreys grew 
into gigantic proportions. The last act was 
less satisfactory — largely a mere closing up 
of the story, and scarcely with an unantici- 
pated incident. 






Ada Rehan's Nell Gwyn. 263 

Such success as Miss Rehan achieved in 
Mr. Kester's elementary drama was due 
entirely to the splendid technical equip- 
ment that was hers after years of acting 
under the thorough tuition and the masterly 
stage management of Augustin Daly. Nell 
Gwyn, as portrayed by Mr. Kester, was 
wholly a theatrical personage. There was 
nothing whatsoever about the character to 
enlist one's sympathy. Mr. Kester did try 
to give her a shade of heart interest by rep- 
resenting her in the first act as sacrificing 
herself through love of Sir Roger Fairfax, 
but this sacrifice was not in the least convinc- 
ing. Nell's grief was strangely cold-blooded, 
and aroused not an iota of feeling. 

There was no pretence about making the 
intrigue with the king anything else than 
passionless caprice on Nell's part. As a 
matter of fact, the inherent grossness of the 
affair did not especially bear down on one, 
for the simple reason that the spectator could 



264 Famous Actresses. 

not take either Nell or Charles seriously 
enough to be shocked by them. This was, 
from one point of view, fortunate, for the 
downright vileness of the situation would 
have been unbearable had it been forced 
home by human beings of flesh and blood 
and conviction. 

In a play with Nell Gwyn as the leading 
character — in fact, in any play involving by 
implication historical personages — one natu- 
rally expected to find the study of character 
the prime essential. In the present case, 
he thought to meet a Nell Gwyn whom he 
could understand as a woman, a King Charles 
with the atmosphere of reality, a Jeffreys with 
the earmarks of humanity. These personages 
were, of course, bound to live through certain 
experiences, but one expected that these ex- 
periences would be used mainly to illustrate 
their characters. " Sweet Nell of Old Drury," 
however, was in no sense a study of charac- 
ter. It was merely the perfunctory drama 



Ada Reharis Nell Gwyn. 265 

of action, the machine play, like " The Pride 
of Jennico," and any number of others more 
or less worthy. Interest was centred, not 
in the characters themselves, but in what 
they did, and the height of effect was not 
attained by making one sympathise with the 
dramatist's creations, but by so deftly turn- 
ing to account ingenious stagecraft that the 
manoeuvring of the puppets might be accom- 
plished to the greatest possible theatrical 
advantage. 

" Sweet Nell " showed throughout the 
untried hand of the novice in play building. 
The play had material enough, material, too, 
that looked good on the surface. Yet it 
missed fire. It did not interest. And this 
is the final criticism of a play of action. If 
it does not interest in its mechanical way, it 
has no reason for being. Of course, one may 
attribute this disaffection in " Sweet Nell of 
Old Drury " to poor construction, and no one 
can stand forth and dispute him. But even 



266 Famous Actresses. 

at that, poor construction is really a subter- 
fuge. The vital point is, how is the play 
badly constructed? I, for one, confess ina- 
bility to answer the question, certainly after 
seeing only a single performance. And if a 
play does not interest, surely one cannot be 
expected to subject himself to it a second 
time simply to find out in what particular 
it is weak. 

In Mr. Kester's case I can tell you that 
most of his theatrical devices were old ; 
that his machinery was almost always on 
the surface ; that he seemed wanting in re- 
source. But other playwrights have shown 
the same faults and yet succeeded. William 
Gillette in "Secret Service," for example, 
used the old devices of the theatre continu- 
ously. Pinero, in "The Gay Lord Quex," 
made no especial attempt to hide his 
machinery. Resource was not Augustus 
Thomas's strong point in "Arizona." Yet 
no one could help being interested in any 




ADA REHAN 
As Nell Gwyn in " Sweet Nell of Old Drury." 



Ada Reharis Nell Gwyn. 267 

of these plays. Why ? Skill and personality 
answer as well as anything else the un- 
answerable question. 

One experiences much hesitancy about 
<^oing into details regarding Miss Rehan's 

personation of Nell Gwyn. He feels like 
sa\-_g simply that the character was not 
suited to her, and letting it go at that. But 
an abrupt dismissal of the case would ignore 
completely the undeniable fact that Miss 
Rehan did more for Mr. Kester's play than 
Mr. Kester's play did for her. I cannot 
name an actress who would have been able 
to get into the character exactly the same 
spirit that Miss Rehan did. It did seem for 
a time during the first act that the spirit 
would never come, and I acknowledge that 
I got no illusion either from the play or 
the players until the interview with the king. 
Miss Rehan was out of her element, and 
she barely hinted at the happy-go-lucky Nell 
that one instinctively looked for. Probably a 



268 Famous Actresses. 

younger woman, even though a poorer actress, 
would have made the impression that Miss 
Rehan failed to get. 

But in the second and third acts, Miss 
Rehan was assuredly excellent. They were 
decidedly her own. She worked with inde- 
fatigable resource to make them go, clowned 
it a bit too much, possibly, for ideal art, 
but won out with the house, nevertheless, 
which at that particular stage of the game 
was of main importance. It was true that 
one could not help seeing how hard she 
laboured ; but she did keep things moving, 
and, for the time being, she aroused interest 
in Nell and her doings. During all these 
scenes — her reception of the players, her 
byplay with the king, her effrontery of the 
ladies of the court, her teasing of Jeffreys, 
and finally her assumption of that worthy 
scoundrel's robes and office — Miss Rehan's 
vivacity, her raillery, her flow of animal 
spirits were constant, amusing, and abun- 



Ada Reharis Nell Gwyn. 269 

dant. But she did work hard. There could 
be no doubt of that. 

It must not be imagined that any of this 
acting was fine art — it was all too brutally- 
frank for that, too apparent for delicacy or 
refinement to have a chance. But what 
else, pray, could Miss Rehan do under the 
circumstances ? She was confronted with 
situations that had no convincing power in 
themselves. She herself had to make them 
go by personal force. It was not a condition 
to be met by fine touches of comedy. She 
had to be farcical, and she had to be melo- 
dramatic. It was an instance where the end 
justified the means. Miss Rehan had the 
means at her disposal, and she did well to 
make use of them. 



CHAPTER XVIII. 

ELIZABETH TYREE. 

Solely because of the effect on her per- 
sonal popularity, Elizabeth Tyree was a bit 
unfortunate in having to play during her first 
starring engagement such a thoroughly de- 
testable character as Selma White in " Un- 
leavened Bread," dramatised from Judge 
Robert Grant's novel by Leo Ditrichstein. 
It was true that Miss Tyree presented this 
dramatic part with a fulness of understanding 
and a completeness of realisation that should 
have won her shouts of approval from the 
housetops. It was true, too, that if Selma 
White had been some weepy heroine sobbing 
her way through the emotional mists of a 
conventional story of heart and home, im- 
270 




ELIZABETH TYREE. 



Elizabeth Tyree. 271 

personated by Miss Tyree with only a frac- 
tion of the insight that was in evidence in 
" Unleavened Bread," the actress would have 
been the fondly idolised of the multitude. 
Neither of these truths, however, counted 
in the face of a Selma White that was a 
straight, out-and-out, uncloaked study in sel- 
fishness. Selma was the sort of woman one 
would call a " cat," and poor Miss Tyree, who 
was not in the least to blame for Selma' s 
shortcomings, had to bear practically all of 
the abuse that Selma inspired. 

Of course, this attitude toward the player 
was not right nor just nor in any way defen- 
sible. It was simply natural, and also, in a 
wholly unconscious and unintentional way, 
the highest possible, if not the most pleas- 
ing, tribute to Miss Tyree's art. The actor 
who appears in an intellectual play should 
be judged intellectually and not emotionally, 
but it is a fact that the average theatregoer 
always has based and always will base his 



272 Famous Actresses. 

conclusions regarding both play and player 
on the way he feels about them. The 
thought that enters into the process of 
judgment is neither deep nor vital ; it may 
colour, but it does not convince. 

It was Miss Tyree's misfortune, therefore, 
that her acting went unacclaimed, if not un- 
appreciated, simply and solely because one 
did not like the woman whom the actress 
was portraying. Lewis Babcock, the first 
husband, when he crowded Selma a bit, had 
his round of applause. Wilbur Littleton, the 
second husband, when he placed Selma abso- 
lutely in the wrong, was vigorously encour- 
aged. Flossie Williams, when she thrust 
Selma forth into outer darkness, was cheered 
to the echo. But Miss Tyree, suffering for 
the sins of another, had to content herself with 
the approval of her own conscience. 

All this happened thus because one judged 
Selma White emotionally, and confounded 
Miss Tyree with the part she was acting. 



Elizabeth Tyree. 273 

In reality, therefore, the applause that Miss 
Tyree did not get was the best proof of the 
strength of the impression that she made on 
the spectators. They found her Selma 
White real, and to achieve reality is the 
limit of the actor's possibilities. Nor, in 
Miss Tyree's case, was the reality limited to 
copying nature. Her impersonation was more 
than a garment clothing the personality. It 
was genuinely a creation, a complete mental 
comprehension of the author's conception 
placed before one with a truth and convic- 
tion that could not be escaped. An actor 
must know an emotion before he can express 
it so that another can understand ; he must 
comprehend a character before he can set it 
forth so that it appeals as a reality to the 
spectator. This emotional knowledge and 
this understanding of character were forcibly 
present in Miss Tyree's Selma White. 

It is a pleasure to be able to say that, in 
spite of the fact that it was a dramatisation 



274 Famous Actresses. 

of a novel, " Unleavened Bread " was actually 
a play. The work was not merely a collec- 
tion of incidents taken from a book, huddled 
and bundled together, and, with the aid of 
an enterprising stage-manager, forced in 
some sort of fashion on the stage. "Un- 
leavened Bread " had both purpose and 
character. It was distinctly definable. Yet, 
immeasurably better as it was than the tribe 
of "Richard Carvels" and " Pride of Jen- 
nicos," "Unleavened Bread" made plain, 
as none of those actable hybrids did, the 
vital difference between novel writing and 
play writing. 

The novel writer can win out through 
pure intellect. The play writer must more 
than all else gain sympathy, without which 
his intelligence, his keen insight, his wit, his 
satire avail him almost nothing. The novel 
writer has at his disposal the important ele- 
ment of time. He can pile up arguments, 
multiply instances, excite and maintain a 






Elizabeth Tyree. 275 

purely mental interest. The play writer 
must work in flashes. He must analyse in 
pictures. He must present facts to the eye 
and to the ear as well as to the imagination. 
He cannot round off the rough corners of his 
work with plausible explanations. The thing 
itself is there to be seen of men. If it be 
harsh and displeasing, no game of battledore 
and shuttlecock with its elements can make 
it compelling. 

In a play, to a degree far greater that in a 
novel, one judges the characters as he does 
the men and women he meets in real life. 
One likes or dislikes the dramatist's crea- 
tions as they appeal to the heart, and not as 
they appeal to the head. If they are lovable, 
true, sincere, and honest, one approves of 
them ; if they are small, selfish, hypocritical, 
and unworthy, he disapproves of them. And 
when one disapproves of a dramatic character 
on good grounds, he demands that such a 
character be properly humiliated and pun- 



276 Famous Actresses. 

ished. The strength of the character does 
not affect the case in the slightest, for on 
the stage the rule that the villain must not 
triumph seems inexorable. An excellent 
case in point is that of Othello and Iago. 
Iago is unquestionably the stronger character 
of the two. He plays with the childlike 
Othello as he wills. Iago has the higher 
intelligence and the subtler nature ; he is 
the more complex man, and in every way 
the more interesting dramatic study. But 
Othello is the one who secures the sympathy, 
and therefore Iago is never permitted to 
occupy the foreground. 

"Unleavened Bread" was a play with an 
unsympathetic heroine, and no hero at all. 
Those were unfortunate weaknesses. When 
I say unfortunate, I mean it, for, although 
it was inevitably unpopular, " Unleavened 
Bread " was thoroughly interesting. It was 
a plausible study of American life ; it 
was rich in character analysis, and charac- 



Elizabeth Tyree. 277 

ter development. Finally, it was acted with 
exceptional skill and with satisfying under- 
standing. In short, " Unleavened Bread " 
was literature, but not stage literature. The 
truth of Selma White as a type was not to 
be questioned. The skill of Judge Grant's 
delineation of the type was not to be denied. 
The force, fidelity, and vividness of Miss 
Tyree' s impersonation was not to be criti- 
cised. I doubt if any one of the three could 
have been improved. Selma White was a 
mental exhilarator, but she was also an emo- 
tional chill. She made one laugh, but she 
never made one applaud. One instinctively 
resented every one of her petty triumphs, 
and rejoiced mightily at all her downfalls. 
He longed to see her set upon, trampled 
under foot, and burdened with ignominy. 
But instead he saw her prosper in her way, 
and he was exasperated beyond measure at 
the spectacle. 

I am aware that a strict analysis would 



278 Famous Actresses. 

show that the measure of Selma White's 
prosperity was also the measure of her per- 
sonal degradation. But the spectator at the 
play is not given to making subtle distinc- 
tions. He perceived Selma materially well 
off, and his thought stopped there. He did 
not consider that she was growing meaner, 
more selfish, and less and less of a woman all 
the time. He did not regard her loss of soul 
as a severe enough punishment for her sins. 
I have devoted so much attention to Selma 
White, because she was, as a matter of fact, 
the play. As for details, the first act of the 
drama carried Selma through her quarrel 
with Babcock and separation from him. The 
second act found her the wife of Littleton, 
and in this act the growth of dissatisfaction 
with her social position was finely indicated. 
The third act brought about the collapse 
of the idealistic and noble-minded Littleton. 
The play ended with Selma's betrothal to 
Governor Lyons, after she had persuaded 



Elizabeth Tyree. 279 

him to break political faith. The action of 
the play was quiet always, but the dramatic 
situation was usually strong enough to pre- 
vent a lapse of attention. At least, it would 
have been if one's sympathy had not hunted 
so consistently and so vainly for an object 
on which to alight. Judge Grant's satirical 
shafts of wit, and his epigrammatical criti- 
cisms of social conditions, gave the dialogue 
splendid sparkle and zest. 

Miss Tyree's Selma White was very fine 
character exposition. She was the woman 
herself, — a fearful creature of deception, un- 
speakable selfishness, and inherent vulgarity. 
By countless little tricks of manner, and 
numberless inflections of voice, Miss Tyree 
made this unhappy human being known, and 
impressed her upon one forceful truth. 

Elizabeth Tyree is not given to boasting 
of her blue blood, but she might with reason 
do so if she chose, for she was born in 
Virginia, the only State in the Union which 



280 Famous Actresses. 

was settled by the aristocracy. Miss Tyree's 
great grandfather fought in the Revolution, 
and her father was a colonel in the Con- 
federate army. Before the War of the Re- 
bellion the Tyree family was wealthy as well 
as distinguished, but the Civil War wiped out 
all resources. Consequently, Miss Tyree, 
instead of leading a life of ornamental leisure 
in society, went on the stage. 

In October, 1890, she journeyed to New 
York and became a student in the American 
Academy of Dramatic Arts. Three weeks 
later Mrs. Kendal, who visited the school, 
" discovered " her. At least, that is what 
Mrs. Kendal has claimed ever since Miss 
Tyree became famous. At any rate, in 
November, 1890, Bessie Tyree — for she did 
not grow into the dignity of Elizabeth until 
ingenue parts were dropped years after — 
was enrolled in the Lyceum Theatre Com- 
pany, understudying Grace Henderson and 
Effie Shannon, and with the Lyceum Theatre 



Elizabeth Tyree. 281 

Company she continued for ten years. Her 
first chance came in February, 1891, when 
she succeeded Miss Henderson as Phyllis 
Lee in "The Charity Ball." Miss Tyree 
played in " The Wife " on the road, and next 
was transferred to E. H. Sothern's support, 
appearing as Faith Ives, the good sister of 
the wicked Druscilla, in "The Dancing Girl." 
Ingenue characters in "Lady Bountiful" and 
" Mary Gotham," in which Miss Tyree made 
a hit, were followed by a French maid in 
"The Gray Mare," and a French milliner in 
"The Guardsman," by George R. Sims and 
Cecil Raleigh, produced in New York on 
April 3, 1893. During the season of 1893- 
94, Miss Tyree appeared in Clyde Fitch's 
" American Duchess," a failure, first acted 
in New York on November 20, 1893, and in 
the title part of Pinero's " Sweet Lavender." 
Then followed her great success as Lady 
Thomasin BeltUrbet in Pinero's "The Ama- 
zons," originally produced in London on 



282 Famous Actresses. 

March 7, 1893, and first seen in New York 
on February 19, 1894. On November 20, 
1894, came her appearance in the Lyceum 
Theatre cast of " A Woman's Silence," taken 
from Sardou by Abby Sage Richardson, and 
on December 29th following Miss Tyree 
appeared in Henry Arthur Jones's "The 
Case of Rebellious Susan," which was 
originally acted in London on October 3d 
preceding. The productions of the seasons 
of 1895-96, with which Miss Tyree was 
connected, were "The Home Secretary," 
by R. C. Carton, acted in London on May 
7, 1895, and in New York on November 
25th, and Pinero's "The Benefit of the 
Doubt," seen for the first time in London 
on October 16, 1895, and in New York on 
January 6, 1896. In November, 1896, 
came " The Courtship of Leontine," which 
lasted but a short time, and was followed by 
Louis N. Parker's " The Mayflower." Then 
Miss Tyree acted in "The Late Mr. Cos- 



Elizabeth Tyree. 283 

tello," which was produced in London on 
December 28, 1895, and in New York on 
December 14, 1896. She went to San 
Francisco with this play, and was not seen 
again in New York until January 1, 1898, 
when she joined the cast of Pinero's "The 
Princess and the Butterfly," then running 
at the Lyceum Theatre. Miss Tyree ex- 
pected to appear in this play when it was 
produced in New York on November 23d, 
but illness prevented. 

In the fall of 1898, Miss Tyree played 
Dolly Cook with John Drew in H. A. 
Jones's "The Liars," brought out in London 
on October 6, 1897, and in New York on 
September 26, 1898. After the close of 
Mr. Drew's New York run, Miss Tyree 
returned to the Lyceum Company, with 
which she gave her fine characterisation of 
Avonia Bunn in Pinero's "Trelawney of the 
Wells," acted first in London on January 20, 
1898, and in New York on November 22d 



284 Famous Actresses. 

following. Miss Tyree drew a captivating 
picture of the tender-hearted, careless, some- 
what hoydenish and vulgar Avonia, the senti- 
mental one whose specialty was boy's parts 
in pantomime. How she did make her hoop- 
skirts fly around in the first two acts, and 
with what a deuce - you - say swagger the 
pantomime costume was worn ! 

When H. A. Jones's " The Manoeuvres of 
Jane " was produced in New York, on Novem- 
ber 27, 1899, ft having been originally acted 
in London on October 29, 1898, Miss Tyree 
was the Constantia Gage, and during the 
next fall on the road, after Mary Mannering 
had left the company, Miss Tyree acted Jane 
in this play and also Lady Curtoys in R. C. 
Carton's "Wheels Within Wheels." Her 
last appearance with the Lyceum Company 
was in the unsuccessful play, "A Man of 
Forty," produced in November, 1900. "Un- 
leavened Bread " was produced in Albany, 
New York, on January 24, 1901. 



Elizabeth Tyree. 285 

Jane and Constantia in " The Manoeuvres 
of Jane " were bosom friends, companion con- 
spirators and direct opposites in character. 
Where Jane was open and impulsive, Con- 
stantia was sly and calculating. However, 
although temperamentally they were violently 
different, as long as their interests were iden- 
tical, they worked together beautifully. Miss 
Tyree in her presentation of Constantia was 
so quiet and unobtrusive that one scarcely 
realised how very effectively she was outlin- 
ing Constantia' s femininely mean disposition, 
and how plainly she was showing the subtle 
methods by which Constantia finally ensnared 
her vacuous lord in the matrimonial net. It 
was a capital piece of work, finely drawn and 
thoroughly convincing. 



CHAPTER XIX. 

GRACE GEORGE. 

Grace George is an actress of dainty per- 
sonal beauty, of potent magnetism and of 
sweet womanliness. Her versatility and her 
range of expression will probably never be 
vastly great, and she will probably always 
have to be content with combining mild 
humour, refined but easily understood, with 
emotion that is prettily pathetic rather than 
compellingly strong. She touches the sym- 
pathetic heart by means of her simple sincer- 
ity — a choice and most graceful talent — 
but she does not, even in suggestion, sweep 
away the foundations of reason with over- 
whelming bursts of tempestuous passion. 
She can, to be sure, indicate, in a minor way, 
286 



Grace George. 287 

emotional stress, but she does not appear to 
have the power to represent it. 

Miss George, it seems to me, is a comedy 
actress of decided potentiality, and she should 
be at her best in a character that unites quiet 
whimsicality and delicate coquettishness with 
tender pathos and barely perceptible heart- 
burning. She is not a melodramatic actress 
in any sense of the word, and in the midst of 
the harsh theatricalism of a melodramatic 
setting, even though the character that she 
herself portrays be saturated with artless and 
ingenuous girlish ness, she is not likely ever 
to make a perfect impression. There will 
always be, under those conditions, incongruity 
between herself and her surroundings. 

For this reason, as well as for the reason 
that the play itself was of decidedly inferior 
material, Miss George's first extended expe- 
rience as a star, which came during the fall 
of 1900, was not a complete artistic success. 
"Her Majesty," dramatised by J. I. C. 



288 Famous Actresses. 

Clarke from a novel by Elizabeth Knight 
Tompkins, averaged up fairly well with the 
ordinary romantic drama, a statement that 
is not according it great praise, however, and 
its most apparent shortcomings could seem- 
ingly have been remedied by expert stage 
management. It is a whole art in itself to 
stage a play of this sort, — a play in which 
the most effective climaxes depend on the 
masterly handling of crowds. Richard 
Mansfield in "Cyrano de Bergerac," Sir 
Henry Irving in " Robespierre," and Henry 
Miller in "The Only Way," exhibited this 
art at its best. A stage crowd must be 
drilled until it acts like a machine, and the 
more machine-like it is, and the more perfect 
its mechanism, the more deceptive — para- 
doxical as it may seem — is its spontaneity. 
In the case of "Her Majesty," with all its 
machinery crudely exposed, one could not 
help seeing the humourous side of the affair 
and secretly wondering if he were not the 




GRACE GEORGE 
As Honoria in " Her Majesty. 



Grace George. 289 

victim of a huge practical joke. Melodrama 
is only a step removed from burlesque under 
any circumstances. In " Her Majesty," that 
dividing step could be kept in view only by 
conscientiously striving to be stupidly hu- 
mourless. What a burlesque " Her Majesty " 
would have made if acted deftly, lightly, and 
with the subtle exaggeration of the artful 
serio-comic ! Nor am I trying to perpetrate 
a cheap joke by the exclamation. Burlesque 
is too serious a subject to jest over. Given 
as a travesty, Mr. Clarke's play would have 
been the acme of fantastic art, a direct appeal 
to the imagination, a delightful example of 
satirical wit. 

Of course, the properly seriously minded 
could not doubt that Mr. Clarke intended to 
write a melodrama that would out-romance 
even " The Prisoner of Zenda," nor was there 
any warrant for suspecting that Miss George 
and her company considered that they were 
presenting anything other than a serious 



290 Famous Actresses. 

piece. Yet everything about the play was 
so unreal, so fanciful, so impossible, that, 
even against my will, I constantly had forced 
upon me the notion that here was a novelty 
in the way of delicious and refined travesty, 
a farce keenly satirising royalty, and all that 
thereto pertained. Moreover, as a special 
target for this biting wit, I saw the pathetic 
figure of little Wilhelmina of Holland strik- 
ingly suggested by Honoria of Nordenmark, 
who would rule her little kingdom to suit 
herself, and who would marry to please her 
own fancy. 

Sorry I was continually to be pulled back 
to prosaic fact, and to be made to realise 
that, after all, "Her Majesty" was only a 
straightforward romantic drama, dealing with 
nothing more than the unusual adventures 
of an imaginary queen, a girl ruler but three 
weeks crowned, innocent beyond belief, as 
ignorant of life as the child, but ready, 
anxious, determined to rule her subjects 



Grace George. 291 

rightly and justly. Simplicity, honesty, 
frankness, and unconventionality, with just 
a touch of feminine humour, were the cardi- 
nal points of her character. It happened 
that when she could learn nothing from her 
prime minister of the condition of her people, 
she put on a disguise and went among them 
herself, fell in love like the average mortal 
maiden, and at length was imprisoned on her 
own warrant. Tribulations too numerous 
to mention followed — adventures with bad 
men, with mobs, finally an abdication, naively 
accomplished by pinning to the throne a note 
in which she resigned her queenship. How- 
ever, all ended happily. The humble lover 
proved to be a count, hereditary something 
or other, and he kindly consented to become 
king for the rest of his days. 

Quite like a fairy story, wasn't it ? And, 
as was eminently correct in a fairy story, its 
sentimental interest was by far its strongest 
point. Love — not the three meals a day 



292 Famous Actresses. 

kind, but love such as one reads about in 
books — was as useful to " Her Majesty" 
as a tow-line is to a canal-boat. It kept 
things moving. This condition was natural 
enough in a romantic play, the chief char- 
acter of which was a woman. A man as 
a romantic star must be of strenuous propor- 
tions ; he must accomplish marvels of phys- 
ical prowess, must carry all obstacles by the 
sheer force of his indomitable will, or else 
he is not worth his salt as a hero. Not so 
with the woman. She is compelled to be 
to a great extent passive. But she can love, 
and that goes a long way. 

If one could have forgotten her contradic- 
tory surroundings, Miss George would have 
seemed reasonably successful in her portrayal 
of the girlish queen. She suggested the part 
perfectly in physical appearance, and she acted 
it with a winsomeness that was most appeal- 
ing, with sweet ingenousness and artlessness 
that were most touching, and in moments 



mdi 






Grace George. 293 

of majestic dignity, of which, fortunately, 
there were not many, with surprising and 
unexpected force, power, and fire. 

Grace George claims New York as her 
native city, and in private life she is the wife 
of William A. Brady, manager of theatrical 
attractions and numerous other money-mak- 
ing enterprises. She has been on the stage 
but a few years, her first appearance as a 
professional actress having been made when 
Charles Frohman produced " The New Boy." 
Previous to that, however, she had had con- 
siderable experience as an amateur. After 
Edna Wallace Hopper quit the role of Wil- 
bur's Ann, the boisterous frontier maiden in 
"The Girl I Left Behind Me," to become 
DeWolf Hopper's leading soubrette, Miss 
George took the part. This was in the fall 
of 1 894. Next Miss George attracted at- 
tention as Aimee in " Charley's Aunt," and 
after that as Gretchen in Auguste Van Biene's 
presentment of "The Wandering Minstrel." 



294 Famous Actresses. 

She supported Charles B. Welles in vaude- 
ville as Madeline in "Frederic Lemaitre," 
and lifted herself into the ranks of the well- 
known by means of her admirable impersona- 
tions in Charles Dickson's " Jealousy," and 
"An Undeveloped Bud." For a time she 
was at the Casino in New York, and after 
that her work in " Mile. Fifi," " The Turtle," 
and "Ben Hur," added to her personal popu- 
larity. Her first venture as a star was made 
in the spring of 1899 in a comedy entitled 
"The Princess Chiffon." This had a New 
York hearing at the Fifth Avenue Theatre, 
and was a complete failure. 




RGARET ANGLIN. 



CHAPTER XX. 

MARGARET ANGLIN. 

It was " Brother Officers," a comedy by 
Leo Trevor, that first brought Margaret 
Anglin to the front as a member of the New 
York Empire Theatre Company, although 
previous to that she had been for some time 
dubbed "a promising actress." This play 
had the curious experience of going into New 
York by way of San Francisco. It was orig- 
inally acted at the Garrick Theatre, London, 
by Arthur Bourchier and company, on Oc- 
tober 20, 1898. Henry Miller, whose pleas- 
ant custom it has been to spend his summers 
in running a stock company in San Francisco, 
got hold of the play, and gave it its first 
American production on August 7, 1899. 
295 



296 Famous Actresses. 

" Brother Officers " reached the Empire 
Theatre, New York, on January 16, 1900, 
where it had the honour of saving a theat- 
rical season that was dubiously trembling in 
the balance. 

The comedy was not such a remarkable 
affair at that, although if one took into 
account that it was Captain Trevor's first 
public trial at play- writing, one might with 
justification be patronising enough to call it 
clever. On general principles I dislike that 
word very much — it is ordinarily made to 
designate so many different things, and con- 
sequently it has come to mean so very little. 
But it did fit Captain Trevor's play most 
admirably. The comedy showed an excep- 
tionable knack for hitting off character, but 
only average ability in telling a story. The 
lines were generally good, but the situations, 
largely because of technical deficiencies and 
too obvious pulling of wires, were rarely 
wholly convincing. In brief, the dramatist 



Margaret Anglin. 297 

put together a very fair acting play, if — 
and it was an important "if" — the actors 
to which it was entrusted were able to take 
full advantage of every opportunity offered 
them. 

A notable instance of this was the char- 
acter assumed by Miss Anglin, who by the 
way first acted the part of Baroness Roydon 
in Mr. Miller's San Francisco production. 
In the fall of 1899, before joining the Empire 
Theatre Company, Miss Anglin was also a 
successful Mime in "The Only Way," in 
which Mr. Miller starred. Baroness Roydon 
was in the main a rather ordinary young 
Englishwoman, who loved devotedly the 
weak-willed, good-natured, and generally un- 
worthy Lieutenant Pleydell. Captain Trevor, 
it should be explained, marked himself a 
thorough champion of caste, and the fact 
that Pleydell had blood made him in the 
dramatist's eyes the potential receptacle of 
all the virtues. The American audience was 



298 Famous Actresses. 

not hopelessly antagonised by this snobbish- 
ness, because it rather admired Pleydell's 
inherent gentlemanliness and instinctive 
generosity. 

Up to the passing of an original and 
movingly pathetic love-scene in " Brother 
Officers," between the youthful baroness 
and the none too deserving lieutenant, Miss 
Anglin had been more passive than active. 
All the more surprising, therefore, was her 
plunge into tear-compelling emotion. With 
perfect sincerity, and with absolute fidelity 
to truth, she portrayed the heartbroken 
woman, not for one supreme moment, — 
that would have been comparatively easy, — 
but through a long-continued period of sup- 
pression and intensity. It was an unusually 
impressive instance of sustained power. 

" Mrs. Dane's Defence," by Henry Arthur 
Jones, was originally produced in Wyndham's 
Theatre, London, on October 9, 1900, with 
Charles Wyndham as Sir Daniel Carteret, 



Margaret Anglin. 299 

Mary Moore as Lady Eastney, and Lena 
Ashwell as Mrs. Dane. The production in 
this country was made at the Empire Theatre 
in New York on December 31, 1900, with 
Charles Richman as Sir Daniel, Jessie Mill- 
ward as Lady Eastney, and Margaret Anglin 
as Mrs. Dane. While the honours of the 
London representation seem to have been 
divided with fairness by Mr. Wyndham, Miss 
Moore, and Miss Ashwell, there was no ques- 
tion whatever that Miss Anglin' s acting was 
the leading feature of the Empire Theatre 
performances. This young woman, who first 
came into notice as the Roxane of the Mans- 
field production of " Cyrano de Bergerac," 
found in the part of Mrs. Dane exceptional 
opportunity for the exercise of her peculiar 
quality of emotional and sympathetic appeal. 
Indeed, so strong was this subtle influence, 
that one was forced to regard as weak and 
unsatisfactory the properly conventional 
moral ending of Mr, Jones's drama. So 



300 Famous Actresses. 






completely did Miss Anglin sway the sensi- 
bilities and conquer instinctive prejudices 
that the spectator was incensed, when he 
saw Lionel Carteret, who loved Mrs. Dane, 
and who was disposed to marry her, past and 
all, return to his colourless girl love, while 
the woman, who had erred, departed, crushed 
and hopeless. 

Miss Anglin's twist of the sympathies 
was unfortunate from the standpoint of Mr. 
Jones, who in " Mrs. Dane's Defence " pro- 
vided a typical Jones play, the morals of 
which were socially irreproachable, regard- 
less of what they may have been ethically. 
Though it is but fair to say in the present 
case that Mrs. Dane's sin was both atrocious 
and long continued. Nor did she repent 
until she was found out, and then, perhaps, 
not so much because of the sin as in dread 
of the public exposure. The morality pose 
of Henry Arthur Jones is thoroughly charac- 
teristic. Whatever his merits as a writer of 



Margaret Anglin. 301 

plays may be, as a sociologist he never strays 
from the beaten path of stern middle class rec- 
titude. By this conservatism he has secured 
for himself both fame and prosperity. Mr. 
Jones was a commercial traveller or "bag- 
man " for a Manchester firm, whose specialty 
was stockings, before he became a dramatist, 
and he has never forgo ten the methods of 
the successful and enterprising salesman. 
He knows the value of ordinary ideas dressed 
up in extraordinary clothes. 

Think it over seriously. Is not the com- 
mon, ordinary, every-day "drummer" — the 
modest fellow who roams wide the country, 
selling other men what they do not want, for 
more than they can afford to pay — material 
more logically fit for the making of a great 
dramatist, than the pallid, sensitive-souled 
literary genius whose only realities are 
dreams and fancies? The "drummer" 
knows human nature ; he knows how to get 
on the right side of a man ; how to flatter, 



302 Famous Actresses. 

to cajole and to persuade. What is the 
dramatist's audience but the composite man, 
who must buy the goods, whether he wants 
them or not, and who, therefore, must never 
be shocked by anything new, strange or 
startling, who must be fed constantly with 
the same old motives, dosed continuously 
with the same old characters, physicked 
periodically with the same old situations, 
who must be chuckled under the chin, 
poked gently in the ribs, punched here 
and patted there, for all the world like a 
feather pillow under the skilful manipula- 
tion of the chambermaid, until he is puffed 
out with pride and is prey for any silly, im- 
possible notion ? It was no strange circum- 
stance that H. A. Jones, " drummer," became 
Henry Arthur Jones, dramatist. 

As a specimen of dramatic technique and 
construction, "Mrs. Dane's Defence " was 
in every way excellent. The exposition of 
the story was accomplished simply, promptly, 



^-. 



Margaret Anglin. 303 

and distinctly, and the big scene of the third 
act was reached without haste, and at the 
same time without delay. Mr. Jones did 
his best in the line of character-drawing with 
Mrs. Dane, a woman of peculiar moral cow- 
ardice and of inherent depravity. She re- 
formed, it is true, and probably also she 
loved honestly, or as honestly as she was 
able to, but her reform was curiously motived 
and characteristically selfish. She repented 
not through sorrow, but through fear. Hers 
was the Puritan motive for being good — to 
dodge hell, and to escape eternal punishment. 
Mrs. Dane hoped by pure living to escape 
public condemnation, and to win the man she 
loved. It was a subtle distinction drawn 
between reformation for its own sake and 
reformation for the meaner motive of per- 
sonal gain, and one not made plain enough 
by Miss Anglin' s acting to save the conclu- 
sion of the play. Miss Anglin made one 
feel that Mrs. Dane had been made the 



304 Famous Actresses. 

victim of narrowness and of social bigotry, 
and consequently one could not help a mo- 
ment of positive joy when he saw this crea- 
ture of moods, rather than of sound judgment, 
walking away with the main interest, and 
leaving Mr. Jones's commendable morality 
shivering in its bare bones. It was the 
perverse triumph of the sinner. 

The action of "Mrs. Dane's Defence" 
passed in a pretty and exclusive country 
community, twenty-five miles from London, 
into which hotbed of respectability had en- 
tered this woman who called herself Mrs. 
Dane. At first one was in doubt whether she 
was really a woman maligned, or an out and 
out impostor. James Risby recognised her 
as Felicia Hindmarsh, a young woman, who, 
after " going wrong " in a Devonshire vil- 
lage, had been met by Risby in Vienna. 
But he, almost immediately, withdrew his 
statement to that effect. Mrs. Bulsom- Por- 
ter, the censor of the community, was not 



Margaret Anglin. 305 

satisfied. She sent a detective, named Fen- 
dick, to Vienna to make inquiries. Fendick 
found that Mrs. Dane was Felicia Hind- 
marsh, but he, too, came under her spell 
and declared the contrary to Mrs. Bulsom- 
Porter and Sir Daniel Carteret, the cele- 
brated judge, who, charmed by Mrs. Dane, 
wished to prove the truth of the long story 
of her career, which she had written out for 
him. 

Felicia was deeply loved by Sir Daniel's 
adopted son, Lionel, and Lionel was naturally 
anxious that her character should be cleared, 
so that the road to matrimony might be 
opened for him. Now Felicia, in her narra- 
tive, simply described the life of a cousin, a 
virtuous married woman, whose home was in 
Canada; and when Sir Daniel began to sift 
the tale it went all to pieces. The scene in 
which this operation of sifting occurred was 
one of almost painful interest and intensity. 
The spectacle of the wretched woman on the 






306 Famous Actresses. 

rack, fighting desperately to the very end, 
when, utterly worn out, she fell on her knees, 
confessed that she was Felicia Hindmarsh, 
and pleaded with Sir Daniel not to part her 
from Lionel, kept the house in awed and 
silent attention. 

What followed was necessarily a mere 
rounding up of the play, but Mr. Jones in- 
troduced a touch of humour to enliven his 
last act. When Sir Daniel discovered the 
truth, he desired to make a clean breast of 
it to Sunningwater society, and to relieve 
Mrs. Bulsom-Porter of the necessity of apol- 
ogising for the alleged slander on Mrs. Dane. 
But Lady Eastney, a woman of the world 
with whom Sir Daniel was in love, had no 
such exact sense of justice. She detested Mrs. 
Bulsom-Porter and persisted in making her 
sign the apology. Lionel Was still infatu- 
ated with Felicia, but Sir Daniel appealed 
to her not to allow the young man to sacri- 
fice himself. She resigned him, though 



Margaret Anglin. 307 

unwillingly, and there was hope that in 
time he might return to his old love, 
Janet Colquhoun. 

It was Miss Anglin's task to make this 
outcast, Mrs. Dane, morally and sympathet- 
ically acceptable, even pardonable and pitiful, 
and she did it with complete effectiveness, 
partly by means of a personality which was of 
itself a powerful appeal for kindly interest, and 
partly by means of an art and a facility of 
emotional expression much greater than she 
had ever before revealed. Miss Anglin is 
not a beautiful woman in the physical sense, 
but she has temperament and a personality 
that is a far more valuable possession than 
any possible degree of bodily perfection could 
be. Her intelligence, too, is keen, her sensi- 
bility delicate, and her instinct sure. The 
character, passing from duplicity to repent- 
ance and possible honesty, was unusually 
complex, and probably there were phases in 
it that Miss Anglin did not fully reveal; but 




308 Famous Actresses. 

for what she did do, she was entitled to the 
fullest commendation. 

When the Empire Theatre Company re- 
vived Victorien Sardou's "Diplomacy" in 
April, 190 1, Miss Anglin appeared as Dora 
in a cast that included William Faversham as 
Henry Beauclerc, Charles Richman as Julian 
Beauclerc, Guy Standing as Count Orloff, 
Edwin Stevens as Baron Stein, and Jessie 
Millward as Countess Zicka. " Diplomacy " 
is a comedy of intrigue, and not a comedy of 
character. Sardou merely indicated his per- 
sonages as types, without troubling himself 
about developing them. His chief interest 
was confined to unravelling an intricate and 
ingenious plot. Possibly, in the case of Dora, 
this statement, that the character was en- 
tirely a fact and not at all a development, 
needs a slight revision, for Sardou did make 
plain Dora's womanly purity and nobleness 
by means of the infamous ballroom proposal, 
about which Dora told her mother. This 



Margaret Anglin. 309 

was necessary because the audience had to 
realise with conviction that the position of 
Dora and her mother as possible adventur- 
esses was a false one. If there had been the 
slightest doubt of their absolute innocence 
and their genuine respectability, the sympa- 
thetic interest of the plot would have been 
destroyed. 

Except in this one particular, however, 
Dora was not a broadly imagined dramatic 
conception, and her likeness to life was 
purely formal. One was asked to accept 
her as the embodiment of gentle womanli- 
ness and tender affection. He was required 
to weep with her as a portrayal of innocence 
wrongly accused of treachery. Whether he 
did weep with her, become indignant over 
her wrongs, and find his heart aching in sym- 
pathy with her wifely distress, depended 
largely on the emotional sincerity of the 
actress who played the part. The charac- 
ter of itself is pure sentimentality, fit food 



- J 



310 Famous Actresses. 

for schoolgirls whose ideal of love is dis- 
tressfully impractical and whose tears fall 
mechanically without regard for the honesty 
of the grief that calls them forth. For a 
person with even the least instinct .for truth, 
or with the barest knowledge of human con- 
ditions, to have his heart touched by Dora's 
misfortunes, the part must be presented by 
an actress who is a mistress of sincerity, and 
who has, in addition to a winning personality, 
strong emotional conviction. 

Margaret Anglin could wring emotion 
from a keg of nails, if it were part of the play 
to do so, and therefore one had to wink con- 
siderably to dodge the moisture engendered 
by her Dora. Miss Anglin, too, has a voice 
that throbs and sobs, and at the sound of it 
man must weep. With the aid of these 
natural gifts, therefore, she succeeded in pre- 
senting Sardou's formal pathos with a sym- 
pathetic appeal that was undeniably strong. 
Moreover, considering the pure sentimentality 



Margaret Anglin. 311 

with which Dora was charged, Miss Anglin 
was remarkably skilful in avoiding bathos and 
morbidness. During the early scenes she re- 
lieved the monotonous emotionalism of the 
part with winsome light comedy, and through- 
out the play her histrionic instinct was always 
on the side of truth. She conscientiously 
refrained from emphasising extravagance and 
hysteria. 






CHAPTER XXI. 

VIOLA ALLEN. 

Viola Allen's popularity, since she left 
the fostering care of Charles Frohman, and 
ventured timidly forth as a star in Hall 
Caine's "The Christian," has been astonish- 
ing, if not absolutely inexplicable. To be 
sure, Miss Allen is a capable actress — one 
of the best leading women on the American 
stage. Probably she would not be absolutely 
without merit in any part that was in the 
least actable. On the other hand, I doubt if 
she will ever prove herself really great, even 
should chance provide her with a character 
of tremendous force and power. 

Miss Allen possesses only vaguely that 
compelling quality of personal appeal, which 
312 



Viola Allen. 313 

of itself creates absorbing sympathetic in- 
terest and positive conviction as regards a 
player's truth and sincerity. Miss Allen 
acts mentally rather than emotionally. Her 
conception of a part is always intelligent, 
comprehensive, and logical. One catches 
her meaning instantly, and, having secured 
that, he finds her exposition clear and dis- 
tinct. His mind is readily touched and even 
satisfied by the picture of humanity that she 
presents. Still, he remains cold, impassive, 
unmoved, and without emotional conviction. 

Acting is more than a mental exercise, for 
acting must stir the heart or only half its 
purpose is accomplished. It is only rarely 
that Miss Allen arouses in one a responsive 
emotion. I doubt if she herself conceives 
her characters as realities. Certainly she 
does not habitually give herself wholly up to 
them. Yet, it is only through absolute res- 
ignation that the actor can secure complete 
control of the spectator. I am not quarrel- 



314 Famous Actresses. 

ling with Diderot's paradox, which declares 
that the actor is always conscious that he is 
acting, that he never loses himself in his 
part — the paradox that has found so warm 
a defender in Coquelin. The actor assuredly 
should not lose himself in his part to the 
extent of losing control of himself, for there 
is neither art nor reason in hysteria. 

However, purely mechanical an actor can- 
not be, and obtain the highest artistic results. 
Be his work ever so perfect as machinery, 
unless it have the subtle quality of inspiration 
that comes only from the heart, it will never 
seem real. This inspiration is what makes 
acting an art instead of merely a trade. In 
common with every human being who tries 
to live naturally and sincerely, the actor finds 
himself in possession of a dual nature. There 
is above all the supreme Ego, always serene, 
always the conscious ruler ; and in addition 
there is the material personality behind which 
the Ego hides itself, and through which it 



Viola Allen. 315 

manifests itself to the world. It is this mask 
which acts, which simulates, which is the 
machine. It is the Ego, ever honest and 
ever perfect in its truth, that brings con- 
viction, that charms, fascinates, and satisfies. 
Miss Allen, it appears, has perfected the 
mask, but has starved the Ego. She per- 
ceives an emotion mentally, but she does 
not actually feel it as a positive reality. 
She works around it, but she does not under- 
stand it. Consequently, it does not affect 
her to any appreciable extent unless it be 
almost overwhelming in its power. Light- 
ness, girlishness, the simple merriment of 
ingenuous childlikeness reach her not at all, 
and therefore her light comedy is the flimsi- 
est of garments, concealing only superfi- 
cially the impassive, unfeeling self. The 
pure freedom of happy, unconscious inno- 
cence she does not comprehend except as 
an unvitalised fact. When the stress of feel- 
ing deepens, however, and the emotion ex- 



316 Famous Actresses. 



r • 



pressed is that of a harassed and suffering 
woman, Miss Allen's instinct is truer. Those 
moments reach her with undeniable force, 
and, as a result, she makes the spectator feel 
as well. 

Although the environment is entirely differ- 
ent, the emotional plot of Dolores de Men- 
doza in " In the Palace of the King," Lorimer 
Stoddard's dramatisation of F. Marion Craw- 
ford's novel, which was produced by Miss 
Allen in North Adams, Massachusetts, on 
September 17, 1900, was very like that of 
Glory Quayle in "The Christian." Both 
parts worked from light comedy into the full 
breadth of melodramatic emotionalism, and 
in both parts Miss Allen signally failed to 
convince one with her light comedy, though 
her portrayal of strong emotional climaxes 
was usually vibrating and thrilling. 

" In the Palace of the King " was a melo- 
drama of rather better than average quality, 
though why it should have proved such a 




VIOLA ALLEN 
As Dolores in " In the Palace of the King. 



_L 



Viola Allen. 317 

record breaker of theatrical receipts, it was 
impossible to comprehend. The success of 
" The Christian," although the play was a 
bad one, was understandable. The drama 
appealed strongly to the non-theatregoing 
element in the community. It liked the 
play's blatant sentiment, and it failed to 
find offence in the play's obvious hypocrisy. 
"In the Palace of the King" was a more 
honest work than "The Christian." It was 
frankly and without pretence a melodrama. 
On the other hand, it was without that ex- 
traordinary sensationalism which, had it been 
in evidence would have accounted for the 
play's unusual popular success. 

The action of "In the Palace of the 
King" passed during a single evening in 
November, 1570, and the scenes were laid 
in different rooms of the Alcazar, a Moorish 
castle in Madrid. The first three of the 
six scenes into which the play was divided 
were required to get the action fully under 



318 Famous Actresses. 

way. At the beginning of the fourth act 
we had learned that Dona Dolores and Don 
John, brother of the king and heir to the 
throne, the most popular man in the king- 
dom because of his personal graces and great 
bravery, were in love with one another and 
determined to marry. This union was op- 
posed on the one side by the king, who, 
jealous of his brother, proposed to get rid of 
him by marrying him out of the country, 
and on the other side by Dolores's father, 
who feared that dishonour might come to 
his daughter through a morganatic match, 
which could be dissolved by the royal word. 
To prevent her meeting her lover, the father 
confined his wilful daughter to her room, but 
she escaped and sought refuge in Don John's 
apartments. 

It was there that the fourth scene was 
placed, and the action of the play really 
began. Dolores, hidden behind the draperies 
of the bed, was a witness of the quarrel be- 



Viola Allen. 319 

tween the king and Don John, noted the 
intervention of Cardinal Luis de Torres and 
heard him with the authority invested in 
him by the Pope defy the King of Spain, 
saw the king's dagger flash and the cardinal 
fall seemingly dead, and listened breathless 
while the king, trembling in despicable 
cowardice, compelled Don John to take the 
crime on himself. 

Immediately the scene was transferred to 
the throne-room, where the festivities, cele- 
brating Don John's happy return from the 
wars, were in progress. The dance was in- 
terrupted by the hurried entrance of the 
king, who, however, quickly ordered the 
merrymaking to continue. Observing that 
Dolores was taking no part in the dance, 
the king required one of the gallants to 
lead her forth. The atmosphere of appre- 
hension was weighty, and even the plotting 
Princess of Eboli, although believing her- 
self secure in her guile, felt it and was 



320 Famous Actresses. 

vaguely alarmed. She questioned Dolores 
as they passed one another in the dance. 
Suddenly all speculation was interrupted by 
the announcement of the death of the cardi- 
nal and Don John's spectacular confession of 
guilt. The court, stupefied, heard the order 
for Don John's arrest, watched mechanically 
the departure of the king, and was not fully 
aroused to the meaning of it all until Do- 
lores, in whom love conquered fear, jeopar- 
dised her woman's honour by declaring that 
she had seen all that had happened in Don 
John's room. Loudly she proclaimed Don 
John's innocence. Fired by her eloquent 
pleading, soldiers and gallants flocked to her 
side, willing to brave even the king himself 
in rescuing their favourite. 

Of course the confidently expected hap- 
pened in the last act. The king completed 
his triumph by condemning Don John to 
death, but was forced to rescind the order 
at Dolores's bidding, backed up as she was 



j_-i 



Viola Allen. 321 

by the whole court and the cardinal him- 
self, who, one was surprised to learn, was 
not dead after all. Then the villains, except 
the king himself, the biggest one of all, were 
properly punished, and the prince wedded his 
Dolores. I suppose they lived happily ever 
afterward. 

In brief, then, "In the Palace of the 
King " had a fifth act that was original 
in conception, spectacularly effective, and 
dramatically strong to an unusual degree. 
The suspense was well sustained, and the 
picturesque and theatrical were artistically 
united by means of the broken conversation 
carried on during the dance by Dolores and 
the princess. The fourth act, too, was melo- 
dramatically excellent, the scene showing 
the conflict between the king on one side 
and Don John and the cardinal on the other, 
being particularly well developed. The last 
act was not without its good moments. The 
first three scenes of the play, however, were 



322 Famous Actresses. 

mostly dull and tiresome. Throughout, the 
dialogue bordered on the commonplace, but 
the character development was somewhat 
above the usual average of melodrama. The 
king was a well pointed conception ; Captain 
Mendoza, Dolores's father, with the notion 
of duty stronger than the instinct of paternal 
tenderness, his life being bound up in the 
service of " God, the king, and Spain," was 
bluntly impressive ; and the dwarf Adonis, 
he with the brave soul and the cowardly 
body, was pictorially interesting as acted 
by William Norris, who made the part 
realistic, but at the same time refrained 
judiciously from accentuating its morbid 
suggestiveness. 



CHAPTER XXII. 

MAXINE ELLIOTT. 

Maxine Elliott is a marvellous instance 
of artistic growth and development. When 
one perceives the quiet self-possession, the 
reposeful technique, the gentleness of hu- 
mour and the tenderness of emotion that are 
so noticeable in her comedy, he must wonder 
how she ever magically escaped the tradi- 
tional New Englandism that once, we could 
have sworn, had drained dry the well-springs 
of temperament, and left her, as far as sym- 
pathy and magnetism were concerned, as 
barren as a New Hampshire granite hill 
stripped of its timber for wood pulp pur- 
poses. This is not a poetic simile, I am 
323 



324 



Famous Actresses. 



aware ; neither was Maxine Elliott a poetic 
woman at the time to which I refer. 

Now they call her an ideal representative 
of the rich, fervid, passionate feminine loveli- 
ness of the sunny South — she who, less than 
five seasons ago, suggested warmth in much 
the same way that a carload of coal, stand- 
ing bleakly on an unsheltered railroad siding, 
suggests a furnace fire. The materials for 
warmth were there, but the conditions, under 
which warmth was a possibility, were wholly 
wanting. 

It was as Alice Adams in "Nathan Hale" 
that Maxine Elliott first made it plain that 
she could act, as well as pose with pictorial 
effectiveness. Nor did she act with violent 
theatricalism, impressively performing a cut 
and dried histrionic "stunt," but she acted 
as the great ones act, from within outward, 
with sincerity, with truth, with the positive 
possession of artistic feeling and personal 
conviction. 



Maxine Elliott. 325 

A condition similar to this is so rare as to 
be almost unique. It is trite to say that the 
actor is born and not made, but the remark 
is strictly true in spite of its triteness. The 
dramatic instinct, through which the impres- 
sion of reality is alone possible, is bred in the 
bone. It can be developed into superexcel- 
lent effectiveness, but it cannot be absolutely 
manufactured from whole cloth. It is be- 
cause of an unwonted abundance of this 
dramatic instinct that the neophyte on the 
stage at times so readily outstrips the veteran 
of years of patient plodding. 

With Miss Elliott the instinct must have 
been there from the first, although it was 
years before it made itself positively appar- 
ent. Probably it was self-consciousness, 
that characteristic New England misfortune, 
which for so long a time completely over- 
shadowed whatever emotional or comedy 
talent she possessed. 

Vastly more subtle as a character study 



326 Famous Actresses. 

than Alice Adams, and far more worthy as a 
human document, was Phyllis Ericson in 
Henry V. Esmond's comedy, "When We 
Were Twenty-one." Phyllis engaged her- 
self to a youngster, because every one in the 
play seemed to think that it was the correct 
thing for her to do, and then proceeded to 
make maidenly love to a second man, into 
whose head the notion of marrying her never 
had come, because he believed himself too 
old for her youth. 

Of course, the old fellow — he was only 
forty at that — was very noble and very self- 
sacrificing. The sacrifice of self in love- 
affairs, you know, always is noble, though 
why, especially when it is the happiness of 
two against the happiness which a third does 
not want, it is impossible logically to state. 
However, there was one original thread in 
the above texture. When Phyllis was jilted 
by her youthful lover, she was delighted be- 
yond measure ; not even her pride was 



Maxine Elliott. 327 

wounded, a condition which made it plain 
without words what an extraordinary young 
woman she was. 

For me the chief fascination of this char- 
acter was due to the great delicacy with 
which Mr. Esmond developed it. Not one 
of its many phases did he attempt to indi- 
cate with the blunt inferiority of illusion- 
dispelling description. He suggested always 
by means of a subtle combination of charac- 
ter and situation. Indeed, he placed his 
main reliance for getting his ideas and his 
ideals to the audience, on the skill and dis- 
cretion of the woman who played the part. 
He demanded something more from the in- 
terpreter of Phyllis than a recitation of the 
lines and a perfunctory regard for the busi- 
ness. He demanded also strict accounting 
for, as well as capable presentation of, every 
mood of his creation. He demanded that 
the part should be played, not from scene to 
scene as a thing of shreds and snatches, but 



328 Famous Actresses. 

always as a thoroughly composed study of 
character, the first impression of which was 
as vital a component of the completed por- 
trait as the important last impression. 

These conditions Miss Elliott met with 
admirable completeness. Her mental grasp 
of the part was ever firm and satisfying, and 
her uncovering of hidden motives, so neces- 
sary to full comprehension, her indication of 
the contrasting mental phases and diverse 
emotions, were ever effective. Her style 
was the best of comedy, light, airy, natural, 
never weighty and never blind. She was 
vivacious, but not girlish nor giddy, charming 
with a constant suggestion of almost matronly 
dignity. Of course, it goes without saying 
that she looked the part. 

During the spring of 1901, Maxine Elliott 
made her first appearance as Portia in the 
production of Shakespeare's " The Merchant 
of Venice," in which N. C. Goodwin ventured 
on an impersonation of Shylock. Her Portia 




Copyright, 1001. by Burr Mcintosh 

MAXINE ELLIOTT 
As Portia in " The Merchant of Venice. 



— - 



Maxine Elliott. 329 

was an exceedingly pleasing characterisation, 
hauntingly reminiscent in action and in voice 
of the Ada Rehan of a number of seasons 
ago. It was, to be sure, a somewhat obvious 
Portia, both in love-making and in lawgiving, 
a Portia of no great subtilty, and, it is to 
be feared, of no great depth ; yet winsomely 
gay and alluring, appealingly feminine, senti- 
mentally charming in the love passages, and 
pictorially perfect always, whether in a blonde 
wig or disguised, as she was in the court 
scene, in her own black hair. 

Treating of Miss Elliott's impersonation in 
detail, Henry Austin Clapp wrote : " The 
actress's radiant beauty is effective at almost 
every point, her mirth is charming and con- 
tagious, her love-making is full of tender- 
ness. But she misses many fine points in 
the text ; in her opening scene she is too 
shrill and querulous in her tone of remon- 
strance against her father's will, and in the 
effort as a whole Portia's greatness of spirit 



330 Famous Actresses. 

and breadth of nature are not adequately- 
indicated. 

"In the scene with Bassanio, before the 
caskets, Miss Elliott was by turns entrancing 
and irritating, coming farthest short of ex- 
cellence in her bearing and speech at the 
moment of her lover's success. The lines 
beginning, ' How all the other passions fleet 
to air,' are not the utterance of a school- 
girl's delirium ; they are breathed from the 
inmost soul of Portia, are secret and solemn, 
and are meant only for her heart and the 
audience, which is supposed to be in her 
confidence. 

"In the trial scene again Miss Elliott's 
best and worst were far apart. ' The quality 
of mercy is not strained,' etc., was given with 
fine spirit and full sensibility ; and if those 
lines and some of the other famous lines 
were not perfectly declaimed, one felt that 
Miss Elliott's long unfamiliarity with such a 
text must be charged with the fault. Portia's 



Maxine Elliott. 331 

chaffing of Bassanio in the fifth act was 
admirably well done, and Miss Elliott is to 
be warmly commended for avoiding all the 
gross and vulgar flippancies which Miss 
Terry permitted herself in this scene at her 
last engagement here." 



THE END. 






INDEX 



FAMOUS ACTRESSES. 



Adams, Maude, 54, 118. 

" Adolph Chalet," Davies, 
Phoebe, 115. 

Allen, Viola, 185, 186, 312. 

"Amateur Rehearsal," 
Spong, Hilda, 137. 

" Amazons," Tyree, Eliza- 
beth, 28. 

"Ambassado r," Spong, 
Hilda, 134, 145, 146. 

" American Duchess," Ty- 
ree, Elizabeth, 281. 

"Americans at Home," 
Spong, Hilda, 137. 

Anglin, Margaret, 295. 

Archer, William, 137. 

Arthur, Joseph, 247, 254. 

"As You Like It," 

Crosman, Henrietta, 44. 
Spong, Hilda, 136. 

Ashley, Minnie, 219. 

Ashwell, Lena, 299. 

" At the White Horse Tav- 
ern," Bingham, Amelia, 87. 



" Barbara Frietchie," Mar- 

lowe, Julia, 12-23. 
Bates, Marie, 210. 
" Becky Sharp," Fiske, Mrs., 

120-131. 
Becque, Henri, 80. 
Belasco, David, 114, 176, 

177, 208, 213, 215. 
" Ben Hur," 

George, Grace, 294. 

Shaw, Mary, 46-53. 

" Benefit of the Doubt," 

Tyree, Elizabeth, 282. 
Bergere, Valerie, 176. 
Bernhardt, Sarah, 58, 88, 

113, 119. 
Bigelow, Charles A., 221. 
Bingham, Amelia, 73. 
Bingham, Lloyd, 83. 
" Bleak House," Davies, 

Phcebe, 117. 
Bloodgood, Clara, 159. 
Bourchier, Arthur, 295. 
Brady, William A., 293. 



333 



334 Index of Famous Actresses. 



Brodie, Steve, 182. 

"Brother Officers," Anglin, 
Margaret, 295-298. 

Browning, Robert, 237. 

Burgess, Neil, 103. 

"Burglar," Davies, Phcebe, 
118. 

" Burmah," Crosman, Henri- 
etta, 45. 

Caine, Hall, 312. 

"Called Back," Davies, 

Phoebe, 118. 
" Calthrope Case," Davies, 

Phcebe, 118. 
" Camille," Sanders, Mary, 

246. 
Campbell, Bartley, 43. 
"Capitol," Bingham, 

Amelia, 87. 
" Captain Impudenc e," 

Bingham, Amelia, 86. 
" Carmen," Bergere, Valerie, 

183. 
Carter, Mrs. Leslie, 201, 215, 

216. 
Carton, R. C, 143, 147, 282, 

284. 
"Case of Rebellious Susan," 

Tyree, Elizabeth, 282. 
Cay van, Georgia, 44. 
Chambers, Haddon, 91, 

92. 
" Charity Ball," 

Crosman, Henrietta, 44. 
Tyree, Elizabeth, 281. 
"Charley's Aunt," George, 

Grace, 293. 
Charmion, 224. 
"Chispa," Davies, Phoebe, 

117. 



"Christian," Allen, Viola, 

185, 312,316,317. 
Churchill, Winston, 97. 
Clapp, Henry Austin, 329. 
Clarke, J. I. C, 288, 289. 
"Climbers," Bingham, 

Amelia, 74, 76, 79-83. 
Coghlan, Charles, 116. 
Coleman, John, 136. 
Collier, Edward, 43. 
Conquest, Ida, 90. 
Couldock, Charles, 117. 
" Courtship of Leontine," 

Tyree, Elizabeth, 282. 
Coquelin, Constant, 61, 314. 
Craigie, Mrs., 145. 
Crane, William H., 246. 
Crawford, F. Marion, 316. 
Crosman, Henrietta, 26. 
" Cyrano de Bergerac," 

Anglin, Margaret, 299. 
Coquelin, Constant, 61. 
Mansfield, Richard, 60, 

202. 

"Dakolar," Sanders, Mary, 
246. 

Daly, Augustin, 44, 78, 258, 
263. 

"Dancing Gir 1," Tyree, 
Elizabeth, 281. 

Dauvray, Helen, 246. 

Davenport, Fanny, 119. 

Davies, Phoebe, 102. 

DeKoven, Reginald, 225. 

DeMille, Beatrice, 225. 

Dickens, Charles, 247, 248. 

Dickson, Charles, 45, 294. 

" Diplomacy," Anglin, Mar- 
garet, 308-311. 

Ditrichstein, Leo, 270. 



Index of Famous Actresses. 335 



Downing, Robert, 43. 

Drew, John, 90, 283. 

" Duchess of Coolgardie," 

Spong, Hilda, 136. 
Dunbar, Paul Laurence, 1 1 1. 

Elliott, Maxine, 323. 
Ellsler, Effie, 246. 
Ellsler, John, 42, 43. 
"Enoch Arden," Davies, 

Phoebe, 118. 
Esmond, Henry V., 326, 327, 
Eyre, Gerard, 115. 

"Fairfax," Davies, Phoebe, 

118. 
Farrell, John J., 184. 
Faversham, William, 308. 
Fiske, Minnie Maddern, 109, 

110,120. 
Fitch, Clyde, 13-23, 74, 75, 

80, 198, 281. 
Ford, Harriet, 225. 
Ford, Paul Leicester, 190. 
Foster, Stephen C, 41, 42. 
"Frederic Lemaitre," 

George, Grace, 294. 
"French Maid," Held, 

Anna, 214, 216, 217, 224. 
Frohman, Charles, 45, 76, 

86, 186, 293. 
Frohman, Daniel, 43, 44, 

137, 147, 186, 195, 198. 
"Frou-Frou," Sanders, 

Mary, 246. 

"Gay Deceiver," Held, 

Anna, 224. 
George, Grace, 286. 
Gilbert, Mrs., 159. 
Gilbert, W. S., 161. 



Gillette, William, 18, 266. 

"Girl I Left Behind Me," 
George, Grace, 293. 

" G 1 o r i a n a," Crosman, 
Henrietta, 45. 

Golden, Richard, 102. 

Goodrich, Arthur, 1 19. 

Goodwin, N. C, 328. 

Grant, Robert, 270, 277, 
279. 

" Gray Mare," Tyree, Eliza- 
beth, 281. 

" Great Ruby," Rehan, Ada, 
258. 

"Greatest Thing in the 
World," LeMoyne, Sarah 
Cowell, 225-236. 

Greene, ClayM., 117. 

Grismer, Joseph, 103, in, 
112, 117, 118. 

" Guardsman," Tyree, Eliza- 
beth, 281. 

" Hamlet," Davies, Phoebe, 

116. 
Hapgood, Norman, 146, 156, 

157. 

Hardy, Thomas, 104. 

" Hazel Kirke," 

Davies, Phoebe, 117. 
Spong, Hilda, 136. 

Hazelton, George C, Jr., 27, 
28, 29, 32, 33, ^6, 39. 

" Heart of Maryland," Car- 
ter, Mrs. Leslie, 215. 

" Hearts are Trumps," Bing- 
ham, Amelia, 87. 

Held, Anna, 214. 

Henderson, Grace, 280, 281. 

"Her Brother Bob," San- 
ders, Mary, 246, 247. 



336 Index of Famous Actresses. 



" Her Maj esty," George, 
Grace, 287-293. 

Heme, James A., 19, 104. 

Hill, J. M., 87. 

" His Excellency the Gov- 
ernor," Bingham, Amelia, 
87. 

" Home Secretary," Tyree, 
Elizabeth, 282. 

Hopper, Edna Wallace, 

293- 
Hoyt, Charles, 118. 
"Humanity," Davies, 

Phoebe, 119. 

" Idler," Crosman, Henri- 
etta, 45. 
" In a Balcony," 

Lemoyne, Sarah Cow- 
ell, 237-243. 

Robson, Eleanor, 237- 

243- 
Skinner, Otis, 237-243. 
" In Mizzoura," B e r g e r e, 

Valerie, 184. 
" In the Palace of the King," 

Allen, Viola, 316-322. 
" Interrupted Honeymoon," 

Spong, Hilda, 134, 146, 

147. 
Irving, Henry, 288. 

" Janice Meredith," Man- 
nering, Mary, 100, 187- 
194. 

" Jealousy," George, Grace, 
294. 

Jerome, Jerome K., 112, 150, 
151, 152, 153, 154. 

" Jim, the Penman," San- 
ders, Mary, 246. 



Jones, Henry Arthur, 144, 

195, 196, 197, 198, 282- 

284, 298-302, 306. 
" Joseph's Sweethear t," 

Spong, Hilda, 135. 
" Junior Partner," Crosman, 

Henrietta, 45. 

" Kean," Davies, Phoebe, 

116. 
Kendal, Mrs., 280. 
Kester, Paul, 23, 24, 257- 

261, 263, 267. 
"King Joh n," Davies, 

Phoebe, 116. 
"King Lear," Davies, 

Phoebe, 116. 
"Kiss of Delilah," Spong, 

Hilda, 136. 

" Lady Bountiful," Tyree, 

Elizabeth, 281. 
" Lady Huntworth's Experi- 
ment," Spong, Hilda, 134, 

147, 148. 
" L'Aiglon," 

Adams, Maude, 54-72. 
Bernhardt, Sarah, 58. 
" Late Mr. Costello," Tyree, 

Elizabeth, 282. 
Lee, Jennie, 117. 
L e M o y n e, Sarah Cowell, 

226. 
Lewis, Jeffreys, 115. 
"Liars," Tyree, Elizabeth," 

283. 
" Lights and Shadow s," 

Phoebe, 118. 
" Little Minister," Adams, 

Maude, 54-58. 
"Little Nell and the Mar- 



Index of Famous Actresses. 337 



chioness," Sanders, Mary, 

247-254. 
"Long Strike," Davis, 

Phoebe, 118. 
" Lost Paradise," S p o n g, 

Hilda, 136. 
" Lost River," Sanders, 

Mary, 247, 254-256. 

Mackaye, Steele, 245, 246. 
"Madame Butterfly," Ber- 

gere, Valerie, 177-180, 

184. 
" Madame Sans Gene," Ber- 

gere, Valerie, 183. 
Major, Charles, 24. 
" Man of Forty," 

Spong, Hilda, 134, 147. 
Tyree, Elizabeth, 284. 
Mannering, Mary, 100, 185, 

284. 
" Manoeuvres of Jane," 

Mannering, Mary, 195- 

200. 

Tyree, Elizabeth, 284, 

285. 
Mansfield, Richard, 288, 299. 
Marlowe, Julia, 12, 198. 
Marshall, R., 150, 160-163, 

172, 173- 

"Mary Gotham," Tyree, 
Elizabeth, 281. 

Mawson, Harry P., 247, 249- 
251, 253. 

"Mayflower," Tyree, Eliza- 
beth, 282. 

Meltzer, Charles Henry, 80. 

" Merchant of Venice," El- 
liott, Maxine, 328-331. 

" Michael Strogoff," Davies, 
Phoebe, 115. 



" Midnight Bell," 

Adams, Maude, 118. 

Davies, Phoebe, 118. 

Miller, Henry, 288, 295, 

296. 
" Million of Money," Spong, 

Hilda, 136. 
Millward, Jessie, 87, 299, 

308. 
"Miss Hobbs," Russell, 

Annie, 150-160. 
" Mistakes Will Happen," 

Crosman, Henrietta, 45. 
" Mistress Nell," Crosman, 

Henrietta, in, 27-40, 45. 
Mitchell, Langdon, 121, 122, 

123, 127. 
" Mile. Fifi," George, Grace, 

294. 
"Monte Cristo," Davies, 

Phoebe, 118. 
Moore, Mary, 299. 
" Mrs. Dane's D e f e n c e," 

Anglin, Margaret, 298- 

308. 
"Mrs. Grundy, Jr.," Cros- 
man, Henrietta, 45. 

" Nathan Hale," 18, 22. 

Elliott, Maxine, 324. 
" Nature," Bingham, Amelia, 

87. 
"Naughty Anthony," Ber- 

gere, Valerie, 177, 181, 

184. 
Neilson, Julia, 257. 
" New Boy," George, Grace, 

293- 
" New South," Davies, 

Phoebe, 119. 
Norris, William, 322. 



338 Index of Famous Actresses. 



"On and Off," Bingham, 
Amelia, 87. 

" On the Bowery," Bergere, 
Valerie, 182, 183. 

"One of Our Girls," San- 
ders, Mary, 246. 

" Only Way," Anglin, Mar- 
garet, 297. 

" Other Man," Crosman, 
Henrietta, 45. 

Palmer, A. M., 246. 

" Papa's Wife," Held, Anna, 
216, 218-223, 225. 

Parker, Lottie Blair, 103. 

Parker, Louis N., 58, 282. 

"Parlour Match," Held, 
Anna, 224. 

" Peg Woffington," Davies, 
Phoebe, 117. 

Peile, F. Kinsey, 146. 

Pinero, Arthur Wing, 138, 
139, 141, 142, 213, 260, 
266, 281, 282, 283. 

" Poupee," Held, Anna, 225. 

" Power of Gold," Bingham, 
Amelia, 86. 

" Princess and the Butter- 
fly," Tyree, Elizabeth, 283. 

" Princess Chiffon," George, 
Grace, 294. 

" Private Secretary," Cros- 
man, Henrietta, 43. 

" Proper Caper," Bingham, 
Amelia, 87. 

" Pygmalion and Galatea," 
Spong, Hilda, 136. 

" Rajah," Crosman, Henri- 
etta, 43. 
Raleigh, Cecil, 281. 



Rankin, McKee, 86. 
Rehan, Ada, 257, 329. 
Rhea, Hortense, 257. 
Rice, Edward E., 216, 224. 
" Richard Carvel," Conquest, 

Ida, 97-101. 
"Richard III.," Davies, 

Phoebe, 116. 
Richardson, Abby Sage, 

282. 
Richman, Charles, 159, 299, 

308. 
Robson, Eleanor, 236, 237, 

242, 243. 
Roe, E. P., 104. 
" Romeo and Juliet," 

Adams, Maude, 55, 67. 
Davies, Phoebe, 116. 
Rose, Edward E., 97, 99, 

190, 193. 
" Rosedale," Davies, Phoebe, 

118. 
Rossi, Ernesto, 116. 
Rostand, Edmond, 54, 59, 

63, 68. 
" Royal Family," Russell, 

Annie, 150, 160-175. 
Russell, Annie, 149. 

Sammis, George W., 43. 

Sanders, Mary, 244. 

Sardou, Victorien, 261, 282, 
308, 310. 

"School," Spong, Hilda, 135. 

" School for Scandal," Da- 
vies, Phoebe, 117. 

Shannon, Effie, 280. 

Shaw, Mary, 46. 

Sheridan, W. E., 116. 

Sims, George R., 281. 

Skinner, Otis, 236-242. 



Index of Famous Actresses. 339 



Smith, Harry B., 220-222, 
225. 

Sothern, E. H., 281. 

Spong, Hilda, 132. 

Spong, Walter Brooks, 137. 

Standing, Guy, 308. 

Stephens, Robert N., 182, 
183. 

Stoddard, Lorimer, 316. 

"Streets of New York," 
Davies, Phoebe, 118. 

"Struggle of Life," Bing- 
ham, Amelia, 86. 

" Sweet Lavender," 
Spong, Hilda, 136. 
Tyree, Elizabeth, 281. 

" Sweet Nell of Old Drury," 
Rehan, Ada, 257-269. 

Tearle, Osmond, 115. 
Terry, Ellen, 331. 
Thomas, Augustus, 266. 
Thompson, Denman, 102. 
Thorne, Charles R., Sr., 116. 
"Tigress," Davies, Phoebe, 

1 18. 
Tompkins, Elizabeth Knight 

288. 
Towse, J. Rankin, 80. 
" Trelawney of the Wells," 
Spong, Hilda, 134, 136- 

143- 

Tyree, Elizabeth, 283, 
284. 

Trevor, Leo, 295, 296, 297. 

" Turtle," George, Grace, 
294. 

"Two Little Vagrants," 
Spong, Hilda, 136. 

"Tyranny of Tears," Con- 
quest, Ida, 90-96. 



Tyree, Elizabeth, 270. 

" Ugly Duckling," Carter, 

Mrs. Leslie, 215. 
"Undeveloped Bud," 

George, Grace, 294. 
" Unequal Match," Spong, 

Hilda, 136. 
" Unleavened Bread," Tyree, 

Elizabeth, 270-280, 284. 

Van Biene, Auguste, 293. 
" Village Postmaster," Bing- 
ham, Amelia, 86. 

Wallace, Gen. Lew, 46, 48. 
" Wandering M i n s t r e 1," 

George, Grace, 293. 
Warde, Frederick, 44. 
" 'Way Down East," Davies, 

Phoebe, 1 03-1 13. 
Welles, Charles B., 294. 
"Wheels Within Wheels," 
Spong, Hilda, 134, 143- 

145- 
Tyree, Elizabeth, 284. 

" When Knighthood Was in 
Flower," Marlowe, Julia, 
12, 23-25. 

" When We Were Twenty- 
one," Elliott, M a x i n e, 
326-328. 

"White Heather," Bingham, 
Amelia, 86. 

" White Rat," Bergere, Va- 
lerie, 183. 

"White Slave," Crosman, 
Henrietta, 43. 

" Wife," 

Crosman, Henrietta, 44. 
Tyree, Elizabeth, 281. 



340 Index of Famous Actresses. 



" Wilkinson's Widow s," 
Crosman, Henrietta, 45. 

Willard, E. S., 106, 246. 

Wilstach, Paul, 224. 

Winter, Percy, 245. 

" Woman's Silence," Tyree, 
Elizabeth, 282. 

" World Against Her," Da- 
vies, Phoebe, 118. 

Wyndham, Charles, 298, 299. 



Yacco, Sada, 180. 

a Young Mrs. Winthrop, : 

Crosman, Henrietta, 43. 
Young, William, 46. 

" Zaza," 

Carter, Mrs. Leslie, 201- 
213. 

Bates, Marie, 210-213. 
Zeigfeld, E., Jr., 224, 225. 






